XCOM: Second Contact
by Agayek
Summary: With the destruction of the Temple Ship humanity knew peace. XCOM never forgot their motto however, 'always vigilant, always reliable'
1. Prologue

**Opening Note**: So about a week ago, I read through Mass Effect: A New Past and shortly thereafter played through nuXCOM again, and this idea came to me. I've no idea how long it'll hold my interest, but I'm taking it for a ride at least. Let me know what you think.

**XCOM: Second Contact  
****By: Agayek**

**_Journal of XCOM Commander Samuel Ramses_**  
**_November 11, 2015:_**  
_Temple Ship destroyed. Reports coming in of pieces raining down on half the Earth. Figures that the Ethereals can't even die peacefully. Hope this'll be the last of them._

_The Colonel volunteered for it. It's not my_

_O'Connell saved us all. She will be remembered._

**_November 17, 2015:_**  
_Nothing from ET since the big one. Council's ready to call the war over; civvies have been partying since it was announced. 11/11 declared official holiday, recognized by all Council nations. Talked them into naming it after the colonel. Dunno what the official tag will be, but 'O'Connel Day' or 'Day of the Flash' were leading last I heard._

_This don't sit right with me though. Colonel told me about a vision she had in the Gollop Chamber. Said the four armed bastards talked to her, something about us succeeding. I think they wanted things to work out like this. Dunno what they planned for after, but we've gotta be ready._

**_November 25, 2015:_**  
_Funerals are just about done now. Recovery will take longer though. 600 million deaths are a lot to mourn. Everyone lost someone. Don't know if the scars will ever fully heal._

_Rebuilding's started at least. DC and Moscow the first to start putting the pieces back together. The rest of the major cities are planning it. The Ethereals could smash them, but they can't keep them down. One last 'fuck you' to the bastards. Humanity's good at that._

**_November 29,2015:_**  
_Vahlen conned 'Torch' into helping with her experiments. Don't think the Major knew what he was getting into. Paid off though. Can synthesize Elerium now. Couple ounces left Torch tapped out, could barely stand once he was done. Set Vahlen to examining pieces of the Temple Ship; Shen can handle E production._

_Gotta find more psi's and turn up more of the materials, Astatine and Cesium whatever those are. Putting the word out now. Making this will ensure financial security for centuries. XCOM-South America isn't closing after all._

**_February 1, 2016:_**  
_Still no sign of ET. Been called paranoid once or twice. Can get them to play ball for now, public likes me too much to get canned. 'Savior of Humanity' I've heard thrown around. Don't much care for it, but small price to be ready for the next one._

**_February 15, 2016:_**  
_Vahlen's figured out how the Ethereals were popping things around on the Temple Ship. 'Psionic Wormhole' she calls them. Psi's can tear a hole between two points in space-time and send things through._

_Maj. Rodriguez lost a bet and was the guinnea pig again, made a portal big enough for a Firestorm that reached over a mile. Vahlen says specialized amps may boost that to interstellar distances. Not sure I can believe it, but she's done the impossible before._

**_February 29, 2016:_**  
_Cracked the distance problem. First stable wormhole from XCOM-Europe to the moon* formed today, XCOM-Luna already in planning stage. Shen's happily busy for the first time since the TS._

_Not going to be making galaxy-wide jumps anytime soon though. Furthest stable portal was 4 lightyears out, just shy of Alpha Centauri. Still, started planning for Hyperwave bases throughout the solar system. If they come back, we'll know it._

_*Remind Vahlen to seal wormhole generator next time she opens portal to vacuum_

**_November 12, 2019:_**  
_Finally got the Mars base set up. Hyperwave Relay going up in the next few minutes. Like pulling teeth to get the Council to cooperate without an alien invasion. Only managed it with civvie support._

**_November 18, 2019:_**  
_Got report of subsurface anomaly from Sentinel-1, near Deseado Crater. Strike-1 already en-route._

**_November 19, 2019:_**  
_I was right. Something else is out there. Strike-1 found an empty base and some hardware we've never seen before. Whatever left it behind, it sure as hell wasn't Ethereal. Set Vahlen and Shen to tearing it apart, should have answers soon._

**_November 26, 2019:_**  
_Shen's got some weird results from the mechanical pieces. Most of these machines shouldn't be possible. The forces involved simply don't allow it to work, but then why would they make something that doesn't function?_

_On the bright side, Vahlen figured out the monolith Strike-1 found. Apparently, it was an outpost for observing humanity by a species called Protheans. Best she can tell, last records are from at least 50,000 years ago though. Not sure what to make of that._

_The public's made up their mind at least. Council hasn't been this free with funds since the War. Even seeing some new faces on the Council. Heh. All it takes is the threat of extinction to unite our species._

**_January 1, 2020:_**  
_Council's taken the last step to a real world-wide unification. The Protheans are out there somewhere, we can't be fighting ourselves when they come back. The United Earth Government aims to ensure we're never at risk like we were before. With XCOM as the sword and shield of humanity, I intend to do the same._

_And the first step is colonization. We have the technology, it's time to go extra-solar._

**_March 7, 2020:_**  
_The son of a bitch did it! Shen has made a breakthrough easily on par with the discovery of Elerium. The Prothean artifacts we recovered from Mars aren't nonfunctional at all. When exposed to an electromagnetic field, their mass changes. Shen's already isolated the material that triggers the change, he's taken to calling it Element Zero. The labrats are already fighting each other over who gets to play with it next._

**_April 14, 2029:_**  
_Psi's are popping up faster than we can train them. Kids mostly, all of them born after the Temple Ship exploded. Dunno what it did, but puberty seems to be the trigger. Almost a quarter of the people born since the Day of the Flash have been psionic._

**_August 12, 2033:_**  
_The Protheans may be more of a threat than I had thought. Explorers on the edge of the solar system noticed something strange about Pluto's moon. Turns out it's some kind of Prothean station, buried in ice after they left it behind._

_They built something the size of a goddamn moon. Gotta admit, this scares the crap out of me. We can't fight something that size. I pray to whatever god is listening that they stay away until we can._

**_December 13 2033:_**  
_The labrats have concluded that the Prothean station on the edge of our system is a transportation device. Somehow, it uses Element Zero to fling objects through space. It's almost as fast as our Wormholes, but is not limited by range._

_Vahlen's already come to me about integrating the concepts with our wormhole technology. "Warpgates" she called them, devices that can be linked together and fling a wormhole through space. I like that a hell of a lot better than our long range options being dictated by the Protheans. She'll figure it out I'm sure._

**_November 11, 2056:_**  
_Today is my last day as Commander of XCOM. Humanity has come a long way since we first cowered in fear of the alien. Must admit, I'm terribly proud of what we've accomplished the last 40 years. Looking forward to where we go from here._

* * *

"Priority alert, Commander!" A voice barked, shattering the serenity of the office. The Supreme Commander of XCOM put aside the battered old diary and looked to his aide. The young man continued, "Shanxi's reporting a scientific expedition destroyed by an alien force. No survivors."

The Commander's face went white. "Is it Prothean?"

"Unsure."

"Damnit... 140 years of peace and now this..." A low growl echoed through the office. "Send word to the Coalition, then contact the_ O'Connell_. Hackett will know what to do."


	2. Hostile Contact

**Chapter 1: Hostile Contact**

The undercurrent of tension running through the bridge of the XCS _O'Connell_ was as obvious as it was unmentioned. Career navy officers tried to deny the scenes from hundreds of B-grade horror movies that were flashing behind their eyes. Much as Command tried to deny it, no one really believed what they were about to face wasn't _Prothean_.

"Do we know _anything_, Commander?" Captain Hackett's growl cracked like a whip through the silence, his frustration hanging in the air like the scent of a rotting corpse. The scowl on his weathered face tugging the small scar at the corner of his mouth into strange shapes.

"No," the voice came across the comm, heavy with resigned fear. "The team researching permanent Relay deactivation out at Relay-12 sent a 'hostile aliens' SOS before going silent. The _Legetho _has already been transferred to Shanxi, our closest colony, to provide a full-time defensive screen. I need your group for recon and, if possible, search and destroy. We're fighting blind here."

Hackett's scowl grew as he stared down his ultimate superior. "Yes sir." The comm died in a flicker of purple light. Wonderful. "Recall the pickets and head for the gate. Get us to Shanxi yesterday!"

The bridge exploded into action, crew scrambling to get their jobs done. Engineers flung themselves out of bed, rushing to their stations as the picket craft settled into their docks. In less than ten minutes, the _O'Connell_ was ready for travel.

* * *

"We are like dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants," Hackett murmured, feeling utterly insignificant, as always when passing through a warpgate. The massive structure dwarfed even the enormous XCOM supercarrier, a silent monument to the might of humanity. Fear, deep and primal, roiled through his gut. Humanity had known peace for _generations_. How was he supposed to handle this?

Doubt, fear and a sick dread fought a war within him, pulling him towards the far side of the bridge, where he could curl up and hide. The bridge suddenly seemed suffocatingly close, despite the size of the room. The captain took a single step away from his post at the center of the room.

Rage suffused his being, injured pride demanding recompense. He wouldn't let these things beat him without firing a shot. Hands tightened into fists as he squared himself back to the bridge's holographic tactical display, with the best of humanity arrayed around him. The raw, naked anger seethed in his breast, keeping the fear at bay. He turned and consulted the shipboard comm, speaking to the whole crew. "Men, I will not lie to you. Aliens have come for us again. We do not know what they can do, who they are, or what they want." He paused to let it sink in. "All we _do _know is that they have attacked us. For 140 years, XCOM has stood vigilant against any threat to humanity. We have tirelessly prepared for this moment. Each of you is among the best humanity has to offer. The alien may be mighty, they may be powerful, but there is one thing they can never have. Our will. Our stubborn, obstinate pride that we are here and we will not go quietly! They mean to kill us! Us, our families, our _people_! We will not allow it! XCOM is the sword and shield of humanity, now and always! Vigilo Confido!"

The XCOM motto tore from a hundred thousand throats, echoing throughout the supercarrier for well over a minute.

* * *

The brief disorientation of wormhole travel passed over every living thing on the ship as they settled into their stations. Pilots crowded into their ready rooms, nervously awaiting the call to action, and the groundpounders stood ready to load into their _Stargrappler _boarding craft. Thousands of breaths were released at once as the call came through a few minutes later. "Hyperwave is green, all hands stand down."

Hackett studied the tacmap in the center of the bridge, trying to divine the enemy through sheer force of will. A flick of a finger opened a comm channel with the nearby _Legetho_, which had been standing guard over the area since the alert went out. "Captain Montgomery, have you managed to find anything on our new enemies yet?"

"Nothing on the Hyperwave, but one of my comm psi's got something. We're not sure what it means though." Montgomery's stocky frame appeared on a terminal to the Captain's left. "It was a final message from the science team. Their comm psi was trying to send us _something _as he died, and it's very jumbled. Barely managed to pick it out of the background noise. Only thing we could get from it is this."

The _Legetho_'s captain's portrait was momentarily replaced by a blurred image of a harsh, angular shape. The picture brought to Hackett's mind nothing so much as the arrowheads ancient Earth societies used, and felt just as deadly. "We're not sure on the scale, just getting this much nearly gave my primary comm psi an aneurysm. Research says to expect MACs, but that's all I can get out of the bloody coats. They refuse to confirm it as Prothean or not."

"Damn. At least we know what we're looking for now, thanks. We're headed out"

"Godspeed Steven. Whatever these things are, give 'em hell."

Hackett nodded acknowledgment and made his farewells. "Vigilo Confido."

"Vigilo Confido" The screen went blank. With a heavy sigh, Captain Hackett took a moment to feel the weight on his shoulders before ordering the _O'Connell_ to make best speed for Relay-12.

* * *

The _O'Connell _forged ahead, moving serenely into a newly formed hole in reality. The distinctive purple flare of psionics caressed the whole eight kilometer length of the vessel as it disappeared into the portal.

Five lightyears away, the process reversed itself, the distinctive nose of an XCOM supercarrier burst into reality. Several minutes later, the stern of the vessel finally emerged, allowing the wormhole to seal itself behind it. Moments later, another portal appeared to the fore of the ship and the process repeated itself again and again.

Two hours and eight portals after departing from Shanxi, the O'Connell prepared itself for Hostile Contact with a new alien force.

* * *

"Sensors, sitrep" Before the captain even finished, the tacmap sprung to life, showing the surroundings of Relay-12, four lightyears distant. Vague shapes appeared on the display surrounding the unmistakably enormous Mass Relay dominating the image. The purple flare of psionic energy burst from behind the man as the ship's sensor officer linked her mind to the _O'Connell_'s hyperwave relay.

"Looks like they're picking through the wreckage, sir. Sharpening the image now." The psionic scowled fiercely and the image resolved itself. The captain let out a sharp breath of relief, relaxing muscles he didn't know he had.

"Huh. Thought they'd be bigger." Chuckles erupted throughout the bridge, the earlier tension abruptly faded as the crew realized the largest of the hostile vessels barely broke 200 meters in length, the other five were less than 100. "Doctor Marcaeus, what do you make of this?"

The portrait of the slim, middle-aged _O'Connell_head of research appeared in the captain's terminal as the man examined the sensor readouts. "Looks like a strong concentration of Element Zero, and the scanners aren't detecting any significant quantities of Elerium, or psionics for that matter. I can only say I've never seen anything like these before."

"Prothean?"

"I really can't tell you, sir. It certainly does not seem big enough though." Hackett's frown sharpened. If it's not Prothean, what were they dealing with?

"Any ideas on what we can expect from them?"

"No guarantees. Zoom in on one please? Thanks." The image dove in suddenly, until one of the alien vessels dominated the display. The doctor slowly rotated the image, studying it from every angle. A few minutes later, the doctor straightened again. "I can be reasonably confident of only one thing. This ship is likely armed with only one weapon of significance. This opening here _appears_to be a barrel of some sort. With the abundance of Element Zero on this ves-"

The sensor officer's voice stepped right over the doctor's. "Sir! Enemy contacts are beginning to move."

"Show it to me." The close-in of the alien vessel faded back to show all six of the alien vessels shifting into a triangular formation. Seconds later, the trajectory calculation returned the name of their probable destination: Shanxi. "Well now, we can't have that."

The Captain started barking orders. "Get our birds flying, we're not letting these bastards get away. Capture-1 through 4, you're on the big one. 5 and 6, take this one." The alien flagship and one of its escorts were suddenly highlighted in gold. "Strike-1 through 8, get on the big one. Bring me whoever's in charge, alive." Hackett's eyes flashed angrily. "16 though 20, you're on the other capture target, get us as much as you can alive and intact. The rest of you stand ready for boarding actions. Doctor, prep the holding chambers."

Muted acknowledgements echoed up as the EMP-armed fighter squadrons and hostile boarding teams locked and loaded. "Sword-1 through 12, you're on the other four. X-rays are heavy on element zero, no elerium. Frontload with ACVs until we know what they can do. Smoke, I want a net a thousand clicks out. Nothing gets through. Use of _Annihilator_strikes is approved."

Final acknowledgement of his orders came through and the admiral allow himself a small, grim smile. "Time to show ET that there's always a bigger fish."

* * *

The bridge of the TFS _Implacable_, leader and flagship of the 327th Turian Patrol Group, was a veritable hive of activity. Turian officers poured through sensor logs as naval infantry boarded the wreckage surrounding Relay-314. Communication with the Hierarchy had been nonstop since the vessels were destroyed. Speculation amongst the rank and file ran rampant as the crew digested what had happened.

"Still, I can barely believe it. _Energy weapons_." The bridge was not an exemption, theories as to the origins of the fallen ships abounded. The excitable tech continued after a beat. "That's not supposed to be possible."

The Turian's partner rolled his eyes. "Will you shut up already? You've been going on about it for five hours. The answer still hasn't changed. It's possible and we're going to figure out how. Now shut up and get back to work."

"But _lasers_! Not even the Salarians have figured how to get ship-to-ship out of those and these primitives in the ass end of nowhere have? You're not even curious?"

"Of course I am, if you would listen for once you'd realize we all are, but you've been saying the same spirits-cursed thing since we killed them. Just give it a rest already." The original speaker made as if to rebut but the words never fully formed. His partner sighed in relief. "Finally. Now stay that way." Reports from the infantry squads turned salvage teams chose that moment to arrive. "Sir, salvage teams report few intact samples. Dragging what they found aboard now."

"Excellent," Captain Thrankus approached and hovered behind the pair. "Today is a red letter day. Once we get these back to Palaven, we'll all be in for commendations. Has there been any progress in determining the alien homeworld?"

"Not yet sir," the first Turian spoke. "VIs still calculating probable vect-" A soft tone interjected. "Correction, just finished. Looks like it's somewhere in this system." A moment of typing saw a section of the galaxy map expand, a specific system highlighted in red. "Can't tell what planet from here."

"Good." The Captain spoke so the whole bridge could hear. "Get the rest of the patrol formed up for movement. We'll take the lay of the land. Who knows, we might even have a new client race on our hands."

The smaller patrol frigates pulled into the standard cruising formation and they began to disembark. "Going to FTL in five, four, thre-" Alarms blared as the ship's sensor suites went ballistic. "Report! What is going on?"

"No idea sir. Massive radiation sources have just appeared, we're surrounded."

"This is not natural. Prepare for combat. Looks like our last targets had some friends." The captain studied the tactical display intently. Extreme radiological readings were erupting from half a dozen separate points around the patrol, each equidistant from its neighbors. "First energy weapons and now this? What _are _these people?"

* * *

XCOM fleet doctrine was a product of the fires of its creation. In the Ethereal War, small, agile, and heavily-armed fighters proved themselves a hundred times over. Humanity put its faith in its aces to serve as its shield. Supercarriers evolved to support this faith, providing a combination transport, coordination center and field support. However, the most important role played by XCOM carriers is delivery.

Hundreds of Automated Combat Vehicles fell from the carrier's hull, plasma and laser weapons bristling as they unfolded into combat configuration. The drones formed into six distinct formations before the nose of the _O'Connell_, and within each clustering into waves of ten. The instant the formations settled, psionic wormholes tore open before each and the drones were away.

Captain Hackett admired the sight of 300 craft moving seamlessly into combat, wave after wave pouring into the portals. The captain then turned his attention to the hyperwave display, keen to watch the alien's reaction. Drones poured out in an endless tide, dancing erratically through space to meet their foes. Plasma erupted as the first wave closed to range. Fierce and deadly, the plasma bolts cleaved towards their target, only to splatter harmlessly mere feet from the enemy hull. Hackett frowned. "What just happened?"

"It appears to be a shield of some kind," Dr. Marcaeus' voice broke over the drone control chatter. Excitement clear in his voice. "Our attacks are being intercepted a uniform distance from the hull."

"Shields?! How the hell does that work?"

"I can't tell you sir," a hungry look passed over the doctor's features. "_Yet_." Hackett's scowl deepened. Why was he always the one to deal with overeager scientists? Marcaeus quickly composed himself in the face of Hackett's glare. Thankfully for all involved, the doctor made a peace offering. "In the meantime, I can let you know that they appear to have laser-based anti-fighter weapons."

The destruction of a handful of ACVs underscored the doctor's point. Hackett growled. "Fantastic. Get the _Typhoons _out there already, we need their targeting shut down. Sword teams, once the ECM is set, you are green to engage. Heavy on the Defense Matrices, ET has shields and lasers."

The _O'Connell_'s twelve strong complement of _Typhoon_-class ships, all 175 meters of each packed to the gills with the best electronic countermeasures humanity could produce, moved forward, gliding seamlessly through newly opened portals. The vessels emerged and formed a cordon a thousand kilometers from the unfolding furball, and for the first time in over a century man waged war against the alien.

William 'Spitfire' Ramses, commander of Sword-1 and descendant of the legendary Sam Ramses, was nervous. He and his men would soon be engaging a completely alien foe. All command had said was to expect lasers and _shields_of all things. He wondered if this was how his great-great-grandfather had felt back in 2015, facing a new, mind-bogglingly more advanced foe.

The nerves would just have to wait however, Sword-1 had a fight to win. A quick button press brought his radio into the channel dedicated to his squadron. "Listen up boys and girls. We're going in dark on this one. Command says these guys have lasers and shields that block plasma. ACVs can't get much more and they're getting bloodied. It's up to us to save the day, as usual." Brief, stilted chuckles broke over the comms. "Keep your eyes open and defmats running, lowest killcount buys the first round."

With that, the squadron of ten, along with 11 other such groups, launched from the _O'Connell_. The distinctive round shape of the _Tsunami_-class fighter craft, inherited from its predecessor, the illustrious _Firestorm_, filled the space around the massive vessel. Squadrons formed together into a tight cluster, ready for the transport psis to grant them passage. Ramses could practically feel the tension in his crew, the normal pre-battle banter completely absent. "This ain't our first rodeo people. The Ethereals came at us when we may as well have been throwing rocks, and we stole all their toys before O'Connell shoved a black hole up their collective ass. Today, we're each sitting in the most advanced piece of technology in human history. These new guys ain't shit. They're just delivering us some new toys, and my momma didn't raise me to refuse a gift."

"Hah," Ramses' second chimed in. "We better get the tree set up then sir, looks like Christmas has come early this year." The rest of the pilots quickly chimed in, each boasting of the swag they would be getting. Ramses smiled grimly, glad that his pilots had relaxed enough to at least pretend to behave normally. A few minutes later, the _Typhoons_ had reached the battle and it was Sword-1's turn to enter the fray.

* * *

Sword-1 burst from their wormhole in the midst of chaos. Hundreds of human drones surrounded the comparatively massive alien vessels, flying as erratically as they could. The alien ships stood strong however, absorbing the drones' fire in flares of blue as their lasers swatted the craft out of the sky. The number of drone corpses surprised Ramses however, the casualty count should have been higher. A surge of new confidence infused his next orders. "We're on Tango-3, weapons free. Make them bleed."

The squadron shot through space, rapidly closing on their chosen target. Ramses downshifted his _Tsunami's _armor as he drew into range, mass effect fields minimizing the mass of the heavy plates and greatly increasing his craft's agility. The squad split, each describing increasingly insane arcs around the alien vessel. Ramses flew along the craft, changing his vector at the slightest sign from his defense matrix, dodging alien defensive fire with centimetres to spare. "Now let's see what we can do."

Plasma lanced from Ramses' fighter, streaking towards the nearest alien hardpoint. A shimmering layer of blue light sprung to life as the bolt slammed uselessly into the enemy's shield. A moment later, Ramses' defense matrix screamed as the targeted turret swung in his direction. The _Tsunami _lurched as Ramses upshifted his armor with a curse. Suddenly-heavy plates braced the craft, killing it's maneuverability.

The shift happened just in time; the alien turret erupted half a heartbeat later, spearing the fighter with a lance of pure energy. Armor plating boiled away as Ramses' momentum carried him through the beam. "Fuck, I'm hit," he called, instinctively flinching in his cockpit while armor diagnostics appeared on his HUD. "Looks light, only took the first 2 layers off my belly. Still good for combat. " Clicks from his squadron acknowledged his words as he downshifted his armor and dove back into the fray.

An eternal minute of frantic dodging and seemingly useless attacks later, Sword command called in with welcome news. "Attention Sword, _Annihilators_are on station. Watch for incoming fire."

Then Ramses received the best news yet. "Sword-1, this is Lance-2. You are danger close, clear us a lane."

"You heard the man. Clear the stern." He continued a moment later on the wideband, "Lance-2, this is Sword-1, fire away." Almost the same instant he spoke, the brilliant glow of a miniature sun appeared over a thousand kilometers from the 'rear' of the alien vessel, catapulted to almost three percent of light speed by the main cannon of the recently-deployed kilometer long _Annihilator_-class artillery ship. The massively dense ball of active fusion material streaked through space, striking the alien ship with all the fury of a newborn star.

* * *

The bridge of the _Implacable _exploded into motion, desperately trying to be ready for whatever the radiation spouts were. Orders were thrown around the room as the ship prepared to receive fire. Activity slammed to a halt however, when the radiation storm vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. "What the hell is going on?!" Captain Thrankus demanded.

"Can't say si-" the sensor officer cut himself off mid-word. "Contacts! 100 k out. Sixt-, one twenty and rising contacts. Nothing bigger than ten meters."

"Where the hell did they come from?!" The captain opened a visual feed on the incoming ships, only to stare in shock at the softly glowing purple ring floating serenely behind the enemy vessels. Another dozen enemy fighters burst out of the ring right before his eyes. "By the spirits..."

The enemy didn't have the courtesy to allow him to gape for long however. Bolts of brilliant green lanced out from the leading fighters as they drew near the Turian vessels, only to shatter against four kinetic barriers. One of the comm officers gave an alarmed squawk at the damage reports. "_Retribution_ shields down fifteen percent with superficial hull damage! Same for the _Phalanx_, _Sparkus_, and _Victa_. Kinetic Barriers can't fully stop these things!"

Thrankus' mandibles tightened in anger, "Evasive action, don't let them hit us, and somebody get the spirits-cursed GARDIAN firing!"

"GARDIAN is working sir, these things are shrugging them off!" The sensor tech's voice was high and shrill. "They just won't die!" Fear hung thick on the bridge. Fighters weren't supposed to be this durable damnit! Fear solidified into dread as the sensors picked up another set of radiation surges, a thousand kilometers distant, but even more powerful.

The new radiation surge died and left half a dozen cruisers in its wake. Thrankus gulped heavily. "Retreat! Get us out of here!" The comm officer tried to relay the order, but before he could finish even the first word, the radio waves _exploded_with junk data. The comm officer's headset slammed into his desk as it released a tinny squeal that even Thrankus could hear. "They're jamming us, switch to laser comms and order the retreat."

The comm officer got to it, but even as the call to retreat went out, more of those strange portals appeared, once more surrounding the patrol. "Get us out of here! NOW!" Thrankus roared, panic thick in his voice. The _Implacable_swung around, trying desperately to find a path that wasn't full of the enemy fighters or straight into three cruisers. Thrankus' heart sank as he realized the new portals had stabilized and even more enemy craft were pouring in.

The new arrivals shot toward the Turian ships and began their assault. Forty of the new arrivals poured into the mass of enemy fighters surrounding the _Implacable_, darting ever closer as they circled the cruiser. GARDIAN systems re-prioritized the new, closer foes as the primary target and cut loose.

The silence of the bridge echoed for what seemed an eternity. Those things had just dodged a laser. They just dodged a _spirits-cursed laser!_A heartbeat passed and the bridge erupted into chaos. Thrankus' voice rang out over all the others. "I don't care what it takes, GET US AWAY FROM HERE!"

The deck lurched suddenly as alarms blared from the engineering stations. The voice of the lead engineer came through, heavy with resignation. "We just lost engines and life support on decks 3 and 5. The system's fried, some kind of power surge."

Thrankus' head bowed. The moment passed and he regained his poise. His mandibles opened to say his farewells, but a flash of roiling silver on the visual feed caught his attention. A cluster of brilliant light shot through space before striking the _Retribution _directly in the stern. Everything went white.

"Spirits, what have I done?"

* * *

Humanity had struck the first decisive blow. Hackett felt a predatory grin grow on his lips, underlit by the gentle orange glow of the holographic display. Small pieces of the enemy frigate drifted slowly through space, carried by the lingering momentum of its destruction. Fierce pride swelled in his chest as the enemy ships started floundering, moving desperately to avoid the fiery death of their compatriot. "Nice shot, Lance-2." Cheers, tinged with more than a hint of bloodlust, filled the bridge, exulting in drawing first blood. "Stay focused people, we have a battle to win."

The crew turned abashedly back to their tasks managing the _O'Connell_'s war machine. Sudden excited motion from one of his techs drew Hackett across the room. As he approached, the young officer turned and said, "Sir, both capture targets have gone quiet. They're ready for boarding."

"Good job," the captain turned back to the central display. The four remaining able alien vessels flailed uselessly at the nimble human fighters. Defensive fire had slowed to a trickle, the human craft barely needing to dodge. The alien shields even seemed to finally be faltering, severe plasma scoring spread across large portions of two of the ships' hulls. Judging the situation well in hand, Hackett sent in the boarding teams. "Get Strike on those boats."

Large, boxy shapes rose from the _O'Connell_, diving immediately through portals to within a kilometre of their targets. Plasma cannons, hung from the stubby wings of the _Stargrappler_ boarding craft, erupted with lances of green fire. Shields sprung to life, only to explode in a shower of blue sparks and collapse as the first wave of plasma collided with it. Subsequent shots slammed directly into the vessel, boiling away armor and softening the hull. _Stargrapplers_shot forward, pointed nose aimed directly at their target.

Hackett watched carefully as the boarding craft penetrated the alien hull, nose-mounted breaching cones slamming into and through the softened outer plate. Reports came pouring in as the infantry squads moved through the ship, detailing any and all alien technology they came across. "What do you think doctor?"

Marcaeus poured through the video feeds, eyes flicking about wildly as he tried to take everything in at once. "Humanoid, probable reptilian or avian ancestry. I cannot say more until I get one on my table." Hackett suppressed a shiver at the casual mention of dissections. "As for their technology, I find myself strangely disappointed." Hackett took a moment to absorb that and then turned to stare at the doctor in utter shock. A self-deprecating grin broke over the doctor's face. "I know, I know. There are a few things I have seen here that we have never even thought of, let alone achieved. But I can't help but think it should have been _more_. The Ethereals were so far beyond us that decoding just a small fragment of their technology catapulted us forward a hundred years or more." A grim nod was all Hackett could muster to that, knowing quite well it was completely true. "This stuff is clever, but, I don't know, I was hoping for something more, well, impressive."

Wry humor filled the captain's face, and voice. "Looks like you won't be getting into any history books today then."

"I would not say that." Doctor Marcaeus twitched, his displeasure clearly showing that Hackett had touched a nerve. The doctor continued apace, a mild rebuke clear in his gaze. "These aliens seem to have a mastery of element zero beyond our wildest imaginings. Shields? On an individual infantry level? That alone is amazing. There are also more than a few things I cannot begin to guess their purpose. Like this." Marcaeus' portrait was replaced by the visual feed from Strike-8. The team had taken up positions deep in the heart of the alien cruiser, slowly advancing through a large cavern-like room. Charred corpses littered the area, the only remnant of the sole living alien's allies. Plasma exploded around the alien's position, but it stood strong, filling the air with small projectiles. Captain Hackett barely noticed all this however, his attention snared by the glowing blue-black sphere embedded firmly in a massive machine of some sort. "This sphere appears to be pure element zero. I cannot even begin to speculate on what they do with it. I _need_at least one of these aliens alive."

"You'll get it doctor," the captain promised. "As much as we can get you."

* * *

Captain Gaius Thrankus of the TFS _Implacable_ was afraid. The aliens had boarded his ship and were in the process of butchering his crew. Reports were coming in from all levels of the _Implacable_, and not a single one was promising. Even worse, the last report from the crew quarters indicated at least one group was headed for the bridge. Thrankus had arrayed the bridge crew in the best defensive formation he could manage, but the room hadn't been designed with infantry combat in mind. Techs huddled behind consoles, rifles clutched nervously in unsteady talons. Fear was so thick in the air, he could taste it.

"Men, we're not getting out of this," Thrankus began. "Whatever these aliens are, they have us by the fringe." The techs sent sidelong glances at each other as he continued. "But we are Turians. We have defended Citadel Space for twelve hundred years. We are the first and best line of defense. And while they may kill us, they _will not beat us_." Mandibles flared in a spike of anger. "We will make them pay for every good Turian they have murdered this day. Stand strong, stand together, and we will never be beaten!"

Ragged cheers rang out, fear being channeled into anger. Rifles focused on the door as their wielders settled into position, determination clear in their posture. The ambush waited anxiously for the invaders, wound tighter than springs as the tension mounted. Several minutes later, a solid thud rang from the bridge's door. Talons tightened on rifles as a second thud shook the door, waiting for the aliens to break through. A moment later, the door _exploded_in a flash of purple light.

Magnetically accelerated projectiles from a dozen rifles filled the new opening, fired in precise bursts to minimize heating. The ping of metal striking the far bulkhead underscored the barking echo of assault rifle discharge in a deafening cacophony of sound. The barrage continued unabated for over a minute, without a sign of a target. The stream of fire slowly began to die as the techs wondered where the aliens had gone. The instant it slowed, a spike of harsh purple light tore out of the shadows, spearing one of the technicians directly in the face. The struck tech stumbled back, but then recovered before he could take more than a single step.

The tech brought his rifle to bear and cut loose, _directly into the Turian in front of him_. "What in the spirits' name do you think you're doing?!" Thrankus yelled at the traitor. In response, the tech opened fire on the next nearest Turian soldier. Eleven rifles swung away from the door and destroyed the traitor in a matter of moments. The Turian forces reoriented on the doorway just as the fourth alien entered the bridge.

The aliens were bipedal, standing almost the height of a Turian. The smooth lines of muscle fibers stretched tightly across their bodies, flowing under enormous plates of dark metal. Each clutched a bulky weapon in their talons, three glowing a bright green, but the closest bore a bright white-silver center. The aliens surged forward, ducking behind bulkheads and consoles, in a disturbing echo of the Turian's arrangement.

Assault rifle fire filled the air, keeping the aliens pinned in place. Return fire came, but it was poorly aimed, not even coming close to the defenders. The deadlock held for only a matter of seconds, another bright flash of purple light lancing from behind the door. The tech to Thrankus' rear jerked back, trying desperately to dodge the attack. The purple beam clipped the unfortunate tech and four rifles swung to cover the latest threat.

"Oh spirits!" The tech cried, somewhere between a sob and a shout. "Get me out of here!" The tech started gibbering wildly as he scrambled out of cover, firing wildly at everything around him. Mass accelerator projectiles slammed into consoles and kinetic barriers equally. The Turian techs were forced ever further into cover to avoid the wild fire. The tech broke and ran, charging directly for the airlock. He didn't manage more than three steps before a bolt of brilliant green hit him in the back. His kinetic barrier flared for a moment before he _screamed_. The sick scent of charred carapace filled the bridge as the tech collapsed and went silent, clearly dead.

"Wha- What the fuck is this?!" Thrankus shouted, raw terror flooding through his body. How in the spirits' name can these cursed aliens do this?! Talons tightened on his rifle, which was then swung over the lip of the console he sheltered behind. The aliens had taken advantage of their distraction and moved forward again, the nearest less than 4 meters from the front of the Turian line. A quick motion yanked Thrankus' only grenade from his belt and sent it flying right before the centermost alien. Muffled cries rang through the bridge as the alien advance scattered. The grenade exploded, leaving two of the aliens exposed and scrambling for cover.

Turian rifles erupted in a lethal rain. Sparks flew from the aliens' armor, hundreds of metal grains chipping away at their plate. One of the pair managed to dive into cover within arm's reach of the frontmost Turian. The second was not so fortunate. It stumbled back, talons clutching at its leg. The alien collapsed as red fluid leaked from it to form an satisfyingly massive puddle.

These things weren't invincible! They bled and died, just like any other. Thrankus felt a rush of elation at the realization. Thrankus' men redoubled fire, seizing the initiative his quick thinking had gained them. Suddenly, the alien pointman surged forward, weathering the storm of rifle fire as his weapon was trained on the unfortunate tech in front of him. A sharp bang echoed through the room as the Turian's torso vanished in a shower of blue gore. Fire focused exclusively on the alien bastard for a brief moment.

Another alien took advantage of its ally's assault and moved into the doorway across the room, which suddenly did not feel nearly as far away as it had this morning. The new alien hefted an enormously long weapon to its shoulder. Thrankus stared down into the glowing green depths and screamed, "DOWN!" Suiting action to word, Thrankus slammed himself firmly behind cover.

A massive bolt of plasma erupted from the gun, slamming into a hapless Turian just across the aisle from Thrankus. The tech collapsed with a soft crunch, the front half of his skull clearly visible in places under melted carapace and scales. A series of sharp whines and cracks echoed in the same instant, and three more of the techs died. The aliens surged forward, leaping over and around cover.

Thrankus heard a rough electric crackling noise roar through the bridge, followed by the unmistakable thump of bodies collapsing to the floor. His mandibles drew together as he rolled out of cover, only to come face to face with one of the aliens. He pulled the trigger of his rifle on reflex, sparks flying from the alien's armor until it grabbed the barrel and tore it from his grasp. Thrankus surged forward in a desperate attempt to tackle the alien. It dodged nimbly aside and he collapsed to the floor. A plated boot caught his shoulder and rolled him over. He spun only to see the alien holding a small gray box pointed at his head. There was a flash of light, and everything went black.

"_Command, this is Strike-1, we have their leader."_

* * *

'Spitfire' was thoroughly enjoying himself. Nothing was quite so awesome as flying rings around your foes, knowing a half-second's delay would see you painfully dead. Sword-1 had moved on to Tango-4 in the aftermath of their original target's spectacularly explosive demise. Plasma from four manned squadrons and over forty surviving drones made short work of its shields. Less than a minute after Sword-1 had joined the fight, Tango-4 was taking hits directly to the hull.

Ramses' fighter shot out from the edge of the ship and curved away, Tango-5 falling to pieces in the background. He grinned savagely at the sight. Only two left! He looped around a few kilometers out and reoriented on the craft for another strafing run. The surviving laser turrets glowed brightly with excess heat, giving the pilot an abundance of perfect targets. Plasma lanced out, turning weapon emplacements and armor into nothing more than molten slag.

Soon enough, the impact of his plasma bolts was followed by the telltale white puff of atmospheric decompression. He turned to the comm to share the news. "Hah! Left-center on the belly is through the armor. Keep it up boys!" Clicks acknowledged his words and plasma rained on the alien vessel. In under a minute, all of the alien lasers had been completely obliterated and gaping holes had formed in its hull. Humanoid bodies drifted among rivers of molten metal and pieces of unsecured equipment, thrown into space by the rapid depressurization of their ship.

The human craft dug through layer upon layer of the enemy vessel, as an ever increasing cloud of alien bodies and equipment formed around the ship. Ramses was just rounding the nose of the craft to begin another strafing run when his defense matrix screamed in warning. He threw his fighter into a roll away from the enemy ship. A flare of light shot from the vessel's nose, plowing into and through an unlucky drone. The drone exploded violently, scattering the surrounding human craft.

The distinctive blue flare of active element zero appeared around Tango-4 and the ship _moved_. It surged forward faster than the eye could follow, plowing through a dozen drones and fighters in the blink of an eye. The ship slowly disintegrated as it charged into and through everything in its path. Ramses stared in shock as the alien ship crashed into one of the surrounding _Typhoon_-class cruisers and exploded in a brilliant flash. Pieces of both ships were flung through space, carried by the momentum of the suicidal alien craft.

Tango-6 filled the space cleared by its companion, surrounded in the corona of active element zero. Atmosphere leaked from the holes in its hull as it catapulted forward, dodging and weaving past the few obstacles still in its path. In under three seconds, the alien vessel had erupted out of the _Typhoon_ cordon and accelerated even further. The ship shifted to a bright blue of all things and disappeared from Ramses' sensor package. "What the hell was that?!"

* * *

Hackett unknowingly echoed the pilot's question. "Tango-6 over fifteen light-seconds from the battlefield and rising," the _O'Connell_'s sensor officer responded, echoing the data on the tacmap. "It appears to still be accelerating." Disbelief was clear in the tech's voice. Hackett couldn't blame her, he didn't believe it himself. Doctor Marcaeus broke in and said what they were all thinking.

"They have faster-than-light..." A healthy mix of shock and awe filled the doctor's voice. He slumped in his chair, clearly torn between being crazily enthused and utterly broken. "They can violate one of the most fundamental laws of physics..." He surged to his feet and caught Hackett's gaze. Even through the remote connection, Hackett felt a chill at the manic look in the doctor's eye. "Captain, instruct your men that if they don't take at least one of the alien engineers alive, they will take its place. I will be preparing the interrogation chamber." The doctor's portrait blinked out.

Hackett was somewhere between bemused and disturbed by the doctor's enthusiasm. The captain tried to ignore it as he moved to begin the after-action cleanup. Scavenge and pilot recovery teams were sent out as Hackett addressed the crew. "Men, today these aliens came, expecting us to be easy prey. They expected to burn our cities and murder our people. Today, you proved them wrong. You proved that we are hard. You proved that we have been forged in the fires of war. You proved that we stand vigilant, that we can always be relied upon. Today, you proved that we are human and we WILL. NOT. DIE!"

Cheers echoed throughout the whole eight kilometer length of the supercarrier as the crew celebrated their victory over their newest alien foe. "But," Hackett's voice stilled the celebrations mid-motion, more than a few individuals tripping over themselves. "We have not seen the last of this foe. One of them escaped, and when next we see them, it _will _bring friends. We won the first battle, but more will come, and we must be ready. Never forget. We are XCOM. Vigilo Confido"

* * *

Thrankus awoke to a throbbing headache. "Ugh... Where am I?" Bright white light filled his eyes as he stood up, blotting out his surroundings. His eyes adjusted slowly, bringing the room into focus. He stood in a small, empty room, with metal walls on three sides and a rounded plane of thick glass on the last. "Wha-?" he began, only to stop as his memories returned. Fear flooded his system and he cast about for an exit. Bipedal aliens wearing white coats stood arrayed on the far side of the glass wall of his cage, all of them looking at him intently. A few of them even looked almost like pink or brown asari. "What do you people want?"

The aliens turned to each other with strange expressions on their faces. He couldn't tell what it meant, but he didn't like it. Small tubes made swift motions across plastic frames clutched in soft talons as the aliens talked to each other, some making exaggerated motions in his direction. One of the aliens, with a mix of black and gray fur in place of a proper headfringe, stepped forward, cowing the others into silence.

The new arrival stared at Thrankus in silence. The Turian refused to back down, returning the stare with all the ire he could muster. Lips twitched into what, on an asari, could almost be called a smile. The sudden jolt of terror he felt was most assuredly _not _caused by the expression. The alien barked a command, and compartments to either side of the glass slid open. Large circular pads on metal arms extended from the new holes. Thrankus gave them an alarmed look. "What is this?!" he shouted nervously. The pads extended further, advancing on his position in the middle of the room. "What are you trying to do?!"

Thrankus didn't know what these things were, but he knew they weren't good for him. He batted them away and lunged at the glass, pounding desperately against it. "I am a prisoner of war! You can't treat me like this!" The metal discs erupted in waves of blue light and the Turian redoubled his efforts against the glass. "When the Council hears about this, they'll have your heads!" Panic further strengthened his limbs, each blow getting stronger and stronger. In response, thick metal plates slowly slid closed over the glass. The metal hatch came together with a very solid and final thud.

Thrankus leaned his head against the glass, despairing. A soft hum to his side forced him to open his eyes. The glowing metal discs had settled on either side of him while he was distracted. His mandibles flared and he tried to move. The glow on the pads surged and everything went _pain_.


	3. Reconciliation

**Chapter 2: Reconciliation**

The chambers of the Citadel Council were as ostentatious as they were imposing. Everything about the room was specifically designed to impress upon the viewer that the inhabitants were _important_. Real, live trees filled each tier of the enormous, vaulted cavern, flanking the long continuous stairway that ran from the room's only public entrance to the Council's platform. The entire chamber was a calculated statement of power. No petitioner could possibly deny the influence of the Citadel Council.

The Turian rushing through the room did not even notice it. He pushed past everything in his way and skittered to a stop just away from the Council. "Sir! Councillor Octavian, sir!" The Turian Councillor's mandibles tightened in anger as he regarded the thoroughly disheveled example of his species.

"Yes?" He tried to keep his voice calm, but everyone present could hear his distaste for the hapless messenger. The messenger was cowed briefly, but rallied, leaning forward to whisper to the Councillor. A moment passed. "WHAT?!" Anger and worry was clear in his tone. The whispering continued as his fellow Councillors glanced at each other warily. Octavian was not one to show either without cause. The Turian turned to regard his Asari and Salarian colleagues. In a much more controlled voice, he said, "I'm sorry, but something has just come up. I need to address this personally."

"Would this have anything to do with one of your patrol vessels coming back full of holes?" Councillor Jaroll asked casually with a blink of his enormous eyes. Tevos started, shooting an alarmed look at both of her fellow Councillors. Octavian glared at the Salarian.

"How do you know about that?"

"My dear Octavian, you really should have realized by now. I know everything."

Octavian made a noise of resigned disgust. "Spirits-cursed STG." The Turian glanced around, clearly looking for a way out of the coming conversation, and just as clearly not finding one. A moment later, he sighed heavily. "Yes. One of our patrols just returned from Relay-314. The ship that returned was the only survivor."

"By the goddess..." Tevos let out in a quiet breath. "What happened?"

"The patrol encountered unknown vessels attempting to activate the Relay." Octavian began. "They engaged and destroyed the ships as per standard procedure. The captain calculated their probable origin and decided to investigate. As they were leaving, the patrol was ambushed and destroyed by over 400 fighters, a dozen cruisers and two _dreadnoughts_."

Heavy silence filled the chamber. Even Jaroll was stunned into silence. "Exactly. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to prepare my people." Octavian turned to leave.

"Wait! You're not truly planning for war are you?" Tevos' voice brought the Turian to a stop.

Octavian rounded on the Asari. "And why wouldn't I? These aliens flaunted Citadel law, then turned around and killed good Turians for doing their job. You suggest I just let it go?!"

Tevos glared at the stubborn idiot. "I'm suggesting that your people initiated First Contact by _shooting at them!_ Of course they're going to shoot back." Octavian returned the glare with equal ire. "We should at least _attempt _peaceful contact before you plunge us all into war!" The pair stared each other down for several minutes, neither willing to budge.

"I must side with Tevos on this," The Salarian Councillor's voice cut through the tension like a knife. Octavian took a moment to process his statement then glared at his other colleague as well. Jaroll blithely ignored it as he flicked through a datapad. "According to the reports, these aliens exhibited extremely advanced technology in realms we did not even believe possible. Their mastery of direct energy weapons and _teleportation _of all things would put us at a severe disadvantage should it come to conflict."

"Wha- How do you keep knowing these things?!" Octavian's shock at the blatant violation of Hierarchy information security briefly outweighed his ire at the situation. Jaroll's smug grin did not make it any better. He visibly recollected himself and sighed heavily. "Very well. We'll send an envoy, but once they're butchered, I _will_ be sending in the fleet."

* * *

Captain Hackett marched into the _O'Connell's _research laboratory like he owned it. "What've you got, doctor?" Marcaeus rose from his terminal and turned to face his superior.

"Quite a lot," he began. "These aliens have proven to be highly lucrative sources of information. To start, the aliens themselves. They are a predatory species, distinctly avian in nature. Mostly humanoid, with three fingered hands and feet tipped by claws. The most interesting part of their physical bodies is their exoskeleton." Hackett's gaze suddenly became interested. "Unfortunately, it's far too brittle to stand as armor."

The captain's brows furrowed. "What makes it so special then?"

"Because it is an incredible natural radiation shield. I can only theorize that their homeworld is awash in radiation, probably solar, to produce such a thing. If we could work out a way to integrate these properties into our current alloys, I imagine we could see our infantry all but immune to radiological attacks."

Hackett whistled. "Impressive. Get some of your people on it. What about their technology?"

"That is the most exciting thing about this," The doctor was visibly vibrating with restrained enthusiasm. "These aliens wield a mastery of element zero beyond our wildest imaginings. As you can imagine, the first thing we examined was the captured ships' faster than light capabilities. As far as our research has shown, and this is backed by our interrogations, they use the enormous machine I mentioned during the attack to create a mass effect field surrounding the craft." Marcaeus' eyes lit with an unholy fire. "This field casually alters one of the fundamental aspects of reality! They do not go faster than light; they make light go faster!"

"What?" Hackett was stunned. A small voice in his head started giggling. If you can't go faster than light, make light go faster! It all makes sense now! "Ho- How is that possible?"

Marcaeus' expression soured at the question, into what on any other individual would be called a pout. "We do not know yet. The current theory is that the field somehow gives photons negative mass, but retains their energy and thus they move faster. I have my best people working on the smaller ship's mass effect core as we speak. As soon as I know something, you will too."

"Excellent, good work. Anything else?"

"Yes, actually." The doctor's response surprised the man. XCOM researchers are good, but two breakthroughs of that scale in less than a week was impressive, even for them. "We have discovered how their shields work." Hackett felt a jolt of relief at the admission. "They use very small emitters placed throughout the armor or hull to project special mass effect fields. These fields stop any object with sufficient kinetic energy. Anything that moves slowly enough would be able to pass through with ease."

"How slow are we talking about doctor?"

"Very. To the point where any plasma we fire would disperse before it gets to the target. It is not feasible to bypass them that way." Hackett turned a glare on his subordinate. "But, the shields _only _stop objects with sufficient kinetic energy. Radiation and energy, especially in the form of lasers, goes through completely unmolested." A grim smile made its way to the captain's features with the news. They could still fight them. "Laser weaponry will be the key to defeating them in space. On the ground however, we may not even need to bother."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that their shields only protect against kinetic impacts, but they ignore radiation. From the recovered corpses and our own experiments, it seems that our plasma weaponry is almost as effective against their infantry as it would be without the shields. Most of the samples killed during the battle died from severe burns. I can only conclude that the heat generated by our plasma fire continued past the shield and, to borrow a phrase, 'cooked them in their own armor'"

"That's... surprisingly good news doctor." Marcaeus made a noncommittal motion of acceptance. "Can we integrate it with the Titan Armor system?"

"We can. Unfortunately, the shield emitters require exacting placement for full coverage, which overlaps with the armor plating to a significant degree. We will need to strip armor from a number of sensitive areas to account for it."

"Damn," Hackett scowled thunderously. "Can you make modular packages for it? I'm sure the boys would appreciate being given the choice." The doctor blinked suddenly.

"That gives me an idea." The doctor started, drawing Hackett's full attention. "Theoretically, if we were to mount an emitter array in the proper arrangement, we could simulate a riot shield."

Hackett's eyes widened. "You have my attention doctor."

"We could make a forearm module for the Titan Armor system with that array. The soldiers could then use it as a mobile shield when needed with minimal loss of armor." A savage grin spread across Hackett's lips.

"Make it happen." The captain nodded once and proceeded to ask the one question he really didn't want the answer to.

"Now, do we know anything about why they came after us?"

"Not as much as I would like," Marcaeus scowled fiercely in the general direction of the holding facilities. "They call themselves Turians and as far as we can tell they are the enforcers of some kind of multi-species galactic government. We are going through their ships' computers, but without a translator we cannot get much from it." The doctor walked over to his terminal, motioning for Hackett to follow. "The only thing we could extract from their leader in that regard is this image." The wall above the desk blinked into life, a grainy image taking up residence there. A space station of some description took up the entire image, floating serenely before its purple-white background. Five long arms stretched from a connecting ring on one end. Corruscating strips of light ran the length of each arm, describing serpentine paths from ring to tip. It was a majestic sight, and it filled Hackett with raw, primal dread. "They call it the Citadel."

* * *

Hackett burst onto the bridge a few minutes later, snapping orders like they were going out of style. "We will be remaining on station here for the foreseeable future. Contact every colony within a hundred lightyears, I want pickets from every one as far out as they can get. If the x-rays so much as sneeze in our direction, I want to know about it. And someone get high command on the horn."

The bridge exploded with activity and the telltale purple flare of psionics. Captain Hackett moved to his chair just off the center of the room, mentally preparing himself for the coming briefing. The Commander was not going to like this. Not a moment after Hackett settled into his chair, the square visage of the Supreme Commander of XCOM appeared on a display to his right. He swung the terminal to the front of his chair and began to relay what Marcaeus' team had discovered.

"I won't mince words, Captain. This is bad." The Commander's throaty growl crackled out of the terminal. "You have performed admirably so far, but this is just the beginning. The _Pettachi_ and _Yamaguchi_ have been reassigned to stand-by at the Shanxi gate. Since you are the only one with experience against this threat, they and the _Legetho _will be under your command. Congratulations, Commodore."

That was a lot of pressure. Hackett swallowed heavily, collected himself and nodded sharply. "Understood, sir. I'll do my best."

"Good man. We're counting on you to keep our worlds safe. I've already assigned the second and fourth scout fleets to finding the... Turians'," the Commander mulled over the word for a moment as if tasting it. "Point of origin. We _will _be going on the offensive the instant they have news." The Commander saluted sharply and Hackett returned it before the terminal went blank. The captain stood and stepped up to the holographic display. A moment's careful study of the map laid the beginnings of a plan, and he began barking orders.

"We're staying here, in sight of the Relay. I want the _Pettachi_ here, and the _Yamaguchi_ here," He indicated two points on the map such that, including the _O'Connell's_ position, they would form a massive triangle with the Relay just past its point. "In case the bastards slip past us. The _Legetho_ is to remain within combat range of the gate at all times. We can't risk them destroying it." Hackett relaxed slightly as his orders were conveyed. They were as ready as they could be for another attack.

* * *

The recently appointed commodore was bored. Sentry duty against the end of the human race was a tense assignment, but one could only keep up that level of focus for so long. Two weeks of constant, unceasing tension would drain anyone, especially when the aliens hadn't so much as farted at them since the original attack. No one had seen a single scale from the blasted Turians, and none of the scouting reports were particularly promising. It was like they'd appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared just as suddenly afterwards. For a man like Hackett, such silence was as unnerving as it was frustrating.

There were upsides to inactivity though. Doctor Marcaeus had made great strides with the captured technology. The new shield module design had been finished the day after his conversation with the good doctor, and the boys in engineering had spent the week since making as many as they possibly could. Another week and every single one of the thirty thousand infantrymen aboard the _O'Connell _would have one available.

The good doctor had even mentioned they may have a prototype conventional FTL drive by the end of the mon- The sudden blare of alarms cut through Hackett's distraction and left his ears ringing. The commodore exploded to his feet and consulted the central display. A craft had just been registered at the edge of their sensors. The ship flew through space at a frankly astonishing pace before coming to a halt at the site of the battle against the Turians. It was a small vessel, no more than thirty meters long, but almost double that wide. The ship took the shape of an eye, complete with a pupil in the form of an enormous hole that reached all the way through it. From the emissions, it appeared the hole served as an omnidirectional reaction drive. Clever. Around the hole was a construction of graceful, swooping lines, guiding the eye to the hole or to the side, where a full third of the ship on either side reached out in small, fragile-seeming spires. "What am I looking at sensors?"

"Unknown sir," the psionic currently manning the sensor station replied, his voice tired. "It uses the same method of FTL, but the design is completely different from the other ships."

Hackett leaned further into the display, glaring at the hologram. "What the hell are you up to?" he murmured, sure that this was a trap of some sort. The vessel floated serenely next to the Relay, waiting for something. They had to know they were being watched after their last stunt. Why would they just sit there?

Hackett's head told him it was a trap, but his gut said there was something more to this. It just didn't make sense. Maybe they were trying to lure out a carrier? But he'd have to be insane to bring the _O'Connell _anywhere near an unknown, and they most likely had no way of knowing the carriers existed in the first place. It might be an attempt to suss out more of their military capacity, but why would he show more to deal with less?

Nothing about this situation made any sense. Why would you attack someone then send in a smaller, less obviously defended vessel to the exact same spot after you lose? Unless... maybe it's not them. The ships _were _very different after all. This ship may be from a third party, an enemy of the Turians who heard about the battle. Yes, that made sense. Hell, they may even be looking for allies against them. Hackett snorted. That'd be too easy.

It was almost certainly a trap, but Hackett couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more to this. His brow furrowed for a moment and he made his decision. "Get Sword-1 in the air, then prep a _Starranger _with a first contact package. They're gonna go meet this thing." Every living thing on the bridge stared at the man like he had lost his mind. He chuckled briefly. "I think this ship may be an enemy of the Turians looking for friends. It's dangerous, but I'm not going to risk starting a two-front war." Techs glanced at each other uneasily, but couldn't refute his logic. "Load up the _Starranger_, minimal personnel. I just want to see if they'll try to talk. Tell Sword-1 to stay ready. If this thing proves hostile, I want it dead before it can fire a shot."

* * *

The chosen _Starranger_ and its escorts flew smoothly through the newly opened portal without fanfare, emerging less than a dozen kilometers from the alien vessel. It had remained remarkably calm during the whole process however, its only response to minimize its profile to the portal. Sword-1 spread out into a cordon around the vessel with a score of plasma cannons trained on the alien ship, ready to tear it apart at the slightest sign of aggression. The tension on the bridge of the _O'Connell _rose with every passing moment of inactivity. Everyone _knew _the aliens were going to attack, it was only a matter of when.

Sweat began to bead on Hackett's brow as he watched the alien vessel, taut as a bow and ready for anything. The alien ship astonished the human crew however, by transmitting short staccato bursts over several radio frequencies. A single burst, then two back-to-back, then three, then five, then it paused for a moment and the whole pattern repeated itself. "Is that... Fibonacci?" one of the bewildered human technicians wondered aloud.

Hackett felt some of the tension slowly seep out of his shoulders. At least they _appear _to want to talk. "Cut in the next time they finish with the next step in the sequence. Eight bursts," he ordered the pilot of the contact craft. The pilot complied as the aliens finished cycling through. The ship went silent for a moment, then an enormous holographic image appeared before it. In it floated a model of the alien craft and a red orb. The ship in the image suddenly became a blue orb, identical save for color to the red one, before the two came together, becoming a purple color in the middle of the image. It paused, then the animation repeated itself.

"Huh," Hackett mused aloud. "Looks like they want a face-to-face." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he considered. They'd have to meet in person eventually, and there'd been no signs of aggression from this new craft, whatever it was. Still, that's no reason to take unnecessary risks. Hackett made his decision. "Tell the x-rays to stay put then bring the '_ranger _back to pick up the contact team. Sword-1, stay on that thing, it doesn't move without my say-so." He turned to the inter-ship comms. "Strike-1 get to briefing room one." Hackett turned to leave, but not before calling to one of the bridge techs. "Lieutenant Torres, with me." The comm psi unlinked herself from the FTL communications array and followed her commander to the briefing room.

The _Starranger_ activated the most crucial part of the first contact package, unfolding a holographic emitter directly connected to the _O'Connell_, where they could manufacture images and animation in short order. The emitter activated, filling space with an image of the _Starranger _and a 3D model of the alien vessel pulled from the hyperwave relay. In the image, the human craft turned and flew off, and the alien vessel remained stationary. A series of dots appeared, each fading in order. When the last dot vanished, the human craft reappeared. The animation reset, but when the human ship left this time, the alien one tried to follow. It exploded violently a moment later. The pair of animations looped three more times before the _Starranger _folded the holographic emitter closed and vanished back through a wormhole.

As the transport tried to explain the situation to the aliens, Hackett was briefing his newly-formed contact team. "These aliens appear to be a new species," Hackett started, laying things out for the ground team. "Their ship design doesn't match anything we've seen before, and they're not shooting at us. We, _I _believe they are a third party, looking for what busted up that group of Turians." Murmurs broke out among the soldiers for a moment in their surprise, before discipline re-asserted itself. "They have indicated they wish a face-to-face, and I want to send you. You are the best we've got, and if this is a trap, I expect you to reverse it on them." The room nodded as one. "Torres, you're the point of contact. Priority is getting past the language barrier. The rest of you are to ensure that if this does go sour, you all get back alive. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir," came the response from the seven veteran soldiers. Hackett nodded sharply and sent them to meet the contact boat. He returned to the bridge a moment later, relieved to see that the aliens had the sense to not move.

A few minutes passed as the _Starranger_ returned and Strike-1 loaded into it. Hackett watched anxiously as the small transport returned to the alien craft. Maybe humanity would actually have a friend among the stars for once. He considered for a moment. Nah, the universe wasn't that kind.

* * *

"Well, that's disturbing," Matriarch Teloni said as she watched the aliens' animation of her ship, the ARS _Oraeli_, exploding for the third time.

"Err... At least they're not shooting yet?" Teloni's adjutant spoke from her position to the Matriarch's left, in equal parts attempted reassurance and shocked confusion. Teloni let out a gentle laugh.

"There is that at least." She sighed wistfully as the hologram faded and the alien ship disappeared into another of those ludicrous wormholes. She studied the movement of the alien fighters as they circled around her like vultures and felt fear stir deep in her breast. "I just hope they're amenable to peace."

One of the fighters flew past the camera both asari were using to watch the aliens at that instant, underslung cannons glowing a bright green. The assistant gulped. "They're doing a very good job of making me think otherwise."

"Thalia," the Matriarch steeled herself to comfort her assistant. "Relax. They have had ample opportunity to kill us by now. We're still alive, so I doubt they mean to do so." Almost despite herself, Thalia relaxed at her mentor's words. Tension seeped out of her body just as another wormhole tore open, disgorging the communication craft. Several seconds later, the alien hologram reappeared, this time showing only the alien ship. The animated vehicle rotated directly around and a small area on the rear of the vessel was highlighted. The highlighted portion slid open, revealing a blank interior. The animation repeated itself twice more then a new image took its place.

In this, the alien craft approached the _Oraeli_, rotated around and moved backwards, bouncing off the nose. The image repeated itself with the alien ship in various places along the hull of the _Oraeli_. "What in the goddess' name?" Thalia wondered aloud, trying and failing to make sense of the alien's message. "What are they trying to say?"

Teloni studied the animation before speaking. "I think..." she began, clearly distracted and still attempting to puzzle out the message. "they are... asking how to dock." She nodded to herself. "Yes, I am reasonably certain that is their intent. Please direct them to the docking port on the belly." The bridge technicians manipulated their holographic emitter, rotating the displayed copy of the _Oraeli _and highlighting the docking port on the belly. A red orb appeared and moved over it over and over again.

The aliens seemed to get the message. Their hologram winked out and the ship dove towards the underside of the _Oraeli_. Teloni stood, mentally preparing herself for the meeting. She turned to the captain of the vessel. "Captain, please have the commandos ready, but keep them out of the room. We don't want to provoke them."

"As you wish, Matriarch," the captain saluted her before relaying her orders to the commando unit the asari matriarchs had assigned to guard this meeting. The troops took up position around the doors to the meeting room, sheltering behind makeshift battlements. The _Oraeli _had been prepared ahead of time, creating an empty killzone immediately outside the airlock. With a word, the Matriarch could have a dozen commandos tearing into the exposed aliens.

Teloni sighed, distressed at the necessity. She turned to her assistant. "Come Thalia, time to meet our guests." The pair moved into the docking room as the alien ship attached itself to the _Oraeli_.

"Matriarch, are you sure about this?" Thalia asked, worry clear in her voice. "Melding this early after contact violates every principle we have for first contact!"

A frown solidified on Teloni's lips. "I don't have much of a choice. There's only three days left to settle this before the Turians drag us into war." She scowled fiercely. "Goddess-damned proud idiots." Thalia patted her shoulder consolingly, sending her a soft smile. The matriarch returned it before schooling her features as the alien ship finished docking.

* * *

"Alright boys," Lieutenant-Commander Carlos Ramirez, leader of Strike-1 began, the lilt of his Latino accent peppering his speech. A pointed cough from one of his soldiers interrupted him, drawing smiles from the whole unit. "And girl. We're on overwatch for this one. ET blinks wrong, you shoot 'em dead. When we dock, me and Anderson are taking point," the indicated trooper nodded, hefting his heavy plasma. "Hill and Akash, cover us. Wei and Altieri, you've got the flanks. Once we're secure, you can do your thing LT."

Affirmations went out and the group settled into their seats. Minutes passed in silence until, with a gentle thump, the _Starranger _docked with the alien ship. Ramirez took his position against the doorframe of the transport, alloy cannon primed and ready. Anderson nodded at him and he thumped the hatch. The door shot open with a hiss, retracting fully in an instant. Ramirez led the charge, the grip required to keep his new shield in position while handling his weapon still slightly awkward for the man. Anderson followed behind, heavy plasma fixed on the two aliens standing before the transport. Both slammed to a halt mere feet from them, weapons trained and ready for anything.

The aliens, blue, humanoid and female, stumbled back in the face of the charge. He couldn't be sure, but Ramirez liked to think they were shocked. Wei and Altieri popped out of the craft next, plasma rifles moving erratically as they covered the sides. The two snipers stayed in the transport, keeping watch over the two pointmen. A moment passed and the squad sounded the all-clear, incredulity clear in their voices. Ramirez relaxed his stance slightly and motioned for his men to do the same. The aliens rallied themselves and stepped forward. The commander studied them intently, then voiced what most of the present humans were thinking. "_Madre de Dios_... There really _are _hot blue space chicks." Chuckles rang from the men, and Akash made an indignant noise in her throat. He waved the official contact forward. "You're up LT."

Lieutenant Torres clambered out of the vehicle, head spinning fast enough that Ramirez briefly worried she'd give herself whiplash. She moved up between the pointmen and took a few steps forward, presenting herself to the aliens. She waved the soldiers back a step and bowed to them. In response, one of the aliens stepped forward, her surprisingly human face set in an expression Ramirez wanted to call relief. The alien awkwardly returned the bow to Torres, surprising the humans. Heh, Ramirez thought. Maybe they're trying to be polite. The alien spoke briefly in a floating, lyrical language and her partner stepped forward.

The motion brought Ramirez' gun back up, focused on the second alien. She stopped instantly and took a step back, seeming to shrink into herself. The first alien frowned at the commander and buried her face in her hand, muttering something in her strange language. She walked back to her partner and placed her hands on either side of the second alien's head. She pointed a finger at Torres, then another at the second alien and moved her hands in a rotating gesture, then placed her palms against her partners face.

"She wants to touch me," Torres guessed, unnerved by the idea. "It looks like it's their form of greeting."

"You sure you want to do that LT?" Ramirez asked, just as nervous about it.

"Not really, but needs must when the devil drives." She stepped forward and made the same switching motion the alien had. The alien frowned and made a motion at her own head, miming an invisible barrier in front of her face. Torres frowned. "Okay, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean."

The human team stared at the alien as she continued her motions. The alien stopped after a moment, realizing they weren't understanding and _pouted_. Ramirez' brain screeched to a halt at the sight. How the hell does an alien pout? The alien steamed for a moment then strode up to Torres and pressed her palms against the lieutenant's helmet. Then she pressed her palms against her own cheeks. The sequence repeated itself thrice and Akash's voice crackled over the comm. "She wants your helmet off, Lieutenant."

"Oh!" Torres exclaimed. "That makes sense." She began to lift her hands to her helmet, but stopped abruptly halfway there. "Wait, what's the atmosphere like in here?"

Wei, the squads' technical expert, answered the question. "Mostly nitrogen and oxygen, not too different from Earth. It should be safe, but you're going into quarantine for a thorough decon if you take your helmet off."

"Fair enough," Torres' hands finished the journey and released the seal. "Let's just get this over with." A strange, almost fruity, taste filled her mouth as she took her first breath of alien air. The primary alien smiled brightly. Ramirez couldn't help but notice just how creepy it was that this alien had such human expressions. Images he'd seen back in basic of Thin Men flashed in the back of his mind and his grip tightened on his alloy cannon.

The alien stepped forward and placed her palms on Torres' cheeks. She mumbled some musical gibberish and closed her eyes. When they reopened, they had been replaced by endless black pits, and Torres released a muffled groan. "PSI!" Ramirez shouted, punching with his shield hand towards the alien. A lance of purple light burst from his fist and nailed the alien in the chest, sending her flying across the room and, more importantly, away from Torres. Anderson surged ahead and planted the barrel of his heavy plasma into the second alien before she could react. The cannon whined and plasma roiled as he began to squeeze the trigger.

A blue bolt slammed into Anderson's side, throwing the man into a roll away from the alien. Plasma flew wildly across the room, slamming into the roof and filling the air with smoke and molten metal. The doors to either side of the room hung open, dark suited aliens carrying rifles filled the hallway beyond them. Alien bullets filled the air. Altieri grunted and a purple shell sprung up, the constant randomly swirling forces of a telekinetic field throwing incoming projectiles off course. Plasma fire peppered the doorways, sending the aliens scurrying back into cover and melting huge portions of the surroundings.

Ramirez took this all in in an instant and turned his cannon on Torres, sure he would have to put down the LT. He took aim, only to see her standing still, her pistol on the ground several feet away and her hands held high in the air. The hell? He'd never seen a mindjacked surrender before. "CEASE FIRE!" she cried, trying to make her voice as strong as she could. At the same instant, the first alien barked something in their language, the sheer authority in her tone almost enough to bring Ramirez to attention despite the wheeze it ended in. Incoming fire halted, the aliens ducking even further into cover. "Cease fire damnit!" Torres cried, still not having moved from her position in the middle of the room. "It wasn't an attack!"

The alien spoke again, this time in English. "Stop! No hurt!" The sudden lack of incoming fire and the sheer absurdity of an alien speaking English, combined with the lieutenant's backing and behavior, was enough to convince Ramirez to order a cease fire. Guns remained trained on the doors and fingers remained on triggers, but plasma stopped flying. Ramirez kept Torres and the aliens under watch and pulled the snipers in to help.

"Hill and Akash, watch the x-rays. They move, they die." The first alien coughed out something in their musical language to the second. Rifles twitched, but the aliens had frozen, refusing to do more than blink. A tense moment passed and Ramirez turned back to his job. "I'm on Torres. Altieri, keep that field up. Anderson and Wei, watch the doors." Ramirez addressed the lieutenant. "The hell's going on LT?"

Still not moving, the lieutenant clearly knew she was viewed as compromised. "It wasn't an attack sir." Ramirez boggled at her, careful to keep his alloy cannon pointed at her at all times.

"And how the hell can I trust that?" The lieutenant turned only her head to look him in the eye.

"I'm not mindjacked sir. You want to tie me up and throw me on the '_ranger _go right ahead, but I'm still in control."

Ramirez eyed her for a moment, then cursed under his breath. "_Chingao! _Akash, how's she look?" he called to the only other comm psi in the area, even if she barely qualified for the title.

Purple flared in the bowels of the _Starranger_ and the sniper's voice came over the comm. "She's clean as far as I can tell, but _fuck _I'm no good at this shit." she grumbled. "Like she said, tie her up with something and hear what she has to say."

Ramirez stared at the tech for a long moment. "Fingers laced behind your back, walk backwards to me, slowly," he finally ordered Torres. The lieutenant complied until she stood right before the commander. "Kneel down." As soon as she was on the ground, Ramirez quickly pulled a length of cable from a pouch on his belt and wrapped it tightly around the lieutenants wrists, then tied her wrists to her ankles. A sharp tug verified the knots were solid and the commander stood back up, bringing his cannon to bear on the aliens still laying on the floor. "Now, one more time, what the _fuck _is going on here?"

"I-It wasn't psionics sir," she began, stumbling over her own words. "When she touched me, she touched my mind, and I touched hers."

Ramirez' eyes narrowed suspiciously. "And I'm supposed to think that's not psi?"

"It's not!" Torres countered emphatically. "I don't know what it is, but it _wasn't_ psionics. She reached into my mind, looking for language, culture, all that, and at the same time I couldn't _not _look into hers. They really did come here in peace, sir."

Ramirez eyed the woman skeptically. "Akash?"

"Best I can tell, she's not lying boss."

"Wonderful," Ramirez growled. He paused for a moment and looked over at the aliens, who lay very still on the ground. He called to the one who had spoken English earlier. "Oi! Alien! You understand me?"

The alien refused to move even as she responded. "Yes. Some." Ramirez breathed a sigh.

"Alright. Stand up. Slowly." The alien complied, assuming the stance that Torres had taken earlier. Or at least she tried. Her arms only made it halfway before she winced visibly and cradled her side, where Ramirez's psi punch had hit her. The commander felt his brow raise at the sight. "What did you do?"

"I... meld," the alien began, clearly having difficulty with the language. "Touch thoughts share, learn talk fast. No attack."

Ramirez studied her intently. "So your people are touch-telepaths?" he asked. She stared at him.

"What."

"Sorry," He shook his head. "You share thoughts by touch?" Ramirez tapped the tied up Torres with a gloved hand and mimed something going from his head to hers and back.

The alien nodded. Ramirez whistled sharply. "Well, that's new. But if you can do that, why is your English so bad?" Another blank look and question. He sighed. "Why you talk no good?"

"Ah," a dark blue blush rose to the alien's cheeks, further disconcerting Ramirez. These aliens were entirely too human. "No full." She caressed her side she held with a soft flinch. Ramirez felt a flush of guilt before he ruthlessly suppressed it. "You stop I middle."

The commander couldn't help but smile briefly at that. "Uh... yea, sorry about that. We're a little twitchy when it comes to aliens." The alien favored him with another blank look and he grimaced. He muttered out loud, "_Mierde_, we really need to get past this."

Torres perked up at that. "Sir, have her do it again." At that, all of Strike-1 had to stare at the woman in astonishment. And so did the alien.

"The hell are you thinking LT?"

"May as well have her finish what she started so we can talk properly. She's already been in my head sir, she already has whatever she's going to get. The worst that can happen is she fries my brain. And..." She paused for a moment before continuing. "I trust her." Ramirez started sputtering. "I saw into her mind sir. She doesn't mean us harm." The commander looked her in the eye for an eternal instant.

"You sure about this LT?" She nodded. Ramirez sighed heavily and made his decision. "Alright. You," he indicated the alien. "finish your meld with her." He pointed at Torres. The alien blinked in surprise.

"Truth?"

Ramirez scowled. "Just do it before I change my mind. Strike-1, stand down." Plasma cooled, barrels were lowered, psionic fields collapsed and the soldiers relaxed. The alien stepped forward and kneeled before the lieutenant. She touched her palms to the woman's cheeks and her eyes flashed black. Torres' eyes widened for a moment before she relaxed. A few seconds later the alien stood back up. She turned to Ramirez and spoke.

"I am Matriarch Teloni of the Asari Republics," she bowed to the man. "And I deeply apologize for any alarm my actions may have caused. I hope we can live in peace together from now on."


	4. Restitution

**Chapter 3: Restitution**

"Say again Ramirez," Hacket's voice crackled over Strike-1's radio. "I think I missed something."

"They're friendly sir," Ramirez repeated himself before briefing the commodore. "They call themselves Asari and heard about us from the Turians. The way our contact here explains it, they're the big wigs of a galaxy-wide government. They came to apologize for the Turians. The _pendejo_ we captured was a _chota _with a chip on his shoulder."

Hackett was silent for a long moment. "We almost went to war because of an incompetent _cop_?!" Hackett asked incredulously. Ramirez made a noise of assent. Hackett paused then asked, "Why on Earth would a cop attack us?"

"They thought the science team was trying to activate the Relay," Ramirez explained. "Which is against their law for some reason. We let 'em keep thinking that for now. I figure it's above our paygrade to correct them."

"You got that right son," Hackett agreed. "Don't tell them any more than you have to for now. We'll have some real diplomats out here soon enough."

Ramirez breathed a sigh of relief. "Good to hear sir. My boys ain't made for playin' nice."

"You've done well even so Commander. Let the Asari know the diplomats are on the way then get your people back here. Hackett out." The comm went silent and Ramirez took a moment to himself. He leaned against the wall of the _Starranger_he had sheltered in for the call and relaxed. A few seconds later he pushed himself to his feet. Ah well, back to the grind.

Ramirez stepped out of the _Starranger_into the middle of a conversation between Torres and the Asari Matriarch. "-gain apologize. I had no idea a meld would be so offensive to your people."

"It's alright, it was an honest mistake," Torres said, waving off the apology. "It's not your fault we're nervous about psychic aliens."

"I've never heard it put quite like that before." Teloni frowned and started muttering to herself just loud enough to be heard. "Still, what could have caused something like that?"

"We've... well, we've had bad experiences in the past," Torres answered the seemingly rhetorical question without a second thought. "We first made contact with alien life almost 150 years ago, when we were still stuck on Earth. It was a coalition of several different species and they tried to kill us all." Teloni's face went slack with surprise at that. Torres took it as a prompt to continue as Ramirez approached the pair. "The leading species of that coalition used abilities eerily similar to your melding to kill a lot of people. We could barely stand against them." Torres trailed off as she saw Ramirez gesturing her to silence behind the Matriarch's back.

"I see," Teloni said, somewhat shakily. "How did you survive?"

"XCOM." Ramirez decided to cut in before Torres could share any more details. Teloni sent him a questioning look. "The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit. We took their toys," Ramirez patted the plasma pistol hanging from his hip before continuing with evident glee. "And shoved a black hole down their throats."

A slight widening of her eyes was all that betrayed Teloni's surprise. "A black hole? Truly?" Ramirez nodded. "However did you manage such a thing without element zero?"

"Uh uh," Ramirez said. "I like you _madre_, but not enough to be spilling state secrets." He winked at her. "Maybe on the second date." Anderson, who had been hovering awkwardly nearby, heaved a deep belly laugh at that while Torres looked scandalized. Teloni seemed momentarily confused, before a sly glint appeared in her eyes.

"Oh?" she began, completely deadpan. "I suppose there are several ways to foster friendly relations between our peoples. That is as good as any, though I must say, Lieutenant Torres here would be my first choice." Ramirez started choking on air and Torres' face went cherry red. Teloni grinned like the cat who caught the canary, making it clear she was joking.

"A-Anyway," the man tried rather unsubtly to change the subject. "Command says the diplomats are en route. ETA in another day or two." Teloni inclined her head gracefully, toning down her grin at the same time. "We will be returning to our people until they arrive."

"Understood. Please, convey my thanks to your commander." Teloni escorted the humans back to their craft. "I am looking forward to a lasting peace between our peoples." Torres bowed to the Matriarch and led most of Strike-1 into the _Starranger_.

"Me too. _Hasta luego_." Ramirez said as he stepped into the transport. The door slid shut and they were off. Ramirez turned to his team. "Nice job boys and girls, we done good. When we get back, grab some rack time and let the REMFs handle the rest. You earned it. As for you, Torres, you're headed straight to decon and psi screening." The lieutenant made to protest. "No. I don't care that they're probably friendly. You were entirely too relaxed with her. We're going to make sure you're not compromised." She sighed in resignation and acknowledged the order. Ramirez collapsed bonelessly into his seat. "_Mierda_, today has been a long day." he muttered.

* * *

The last forty hours had been exhausting. Between briefing the Council and assembling a human-language package for the universal translators, she had barely found time to sleep. It had not helped any that ever since the human delegation had departed, Teloni's thoughts had been whirling about the newest players on the galactic stage. She had certainly been surprised by their method of greeting. Really, who sends heavily armed soldiers to a diplomatic meeting? What little she had managed to pry from Lieutenant Torres explained that quite neatly though, as well as giving her cause for even more concern. Another species with the ability to mind-meld? That was unheard of. Even worse was their apparent hostility.

Then Lieutenant-Commander Ramirez had to speak up. If she had read his implication correctly, these humans were capable of controlling black holes and were willing to use them as weapons. _That _tidbit had worried her enough that she almost regretted not taking more than just language from the lieutenant. Though in hindsight, she realized with a wince and a soft rub of her side, the attempt likely would not have ended peacefully.

The Council was just as shocked at these revelations as she was. Enough so that Councillor Octavian almost vocally admitted to being wrong. That was a satisfying sight. She had then been instructed in no uncertain terms that she was to convince Humanity to join the Citadel Council as an associate member, or at bare minimum agree to a non-aggression and trade agreement, by whatever means necessary, and she had been granted extensive authority to ensure it. Hopefully, it would not be necessary.

A knock on her chamber door jolted Matriarch Teloni from her thoughts. "The human diplomats are approaching, Matriarch." Thalia's voice called from the other side. "Are you ready to meet them?"

Teloni sighed and rose from her kneeling position in the middle of the room. "As I will ever be," she said calmly. Teloni made her way towards the airlock, her assistant travelling beside and slightly behind her. "Let us hope this meeting starts better than the last."

* * *

Teloni smiled brightly as the airlock doors slid open. "Lieutenant Torres, it is good to see you again." The matriarch bowed. "Am I to take it you have been appointed our official liaison?"

"Not exactly," Torres said with a chuckle. "The brass figured a familiar face would help with introductions." Teloni's confusion lasted only a moment as the human stepped into the asari ship and a pair of male humans followed her out. She waved a hand at the men. "This is Ambassador Isak Eklund and his assistant Donnel Udina. They will be handling the negotiations. Gentlemen, this is Matriarch Teloni of the Asari Republics and..." Torres trailed off before turning to Teloni. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I don't know your assistant's name."

"I am Thalia Ialos, adjutant to the Matriarch," Thalia said with a bow and a perfectly straight face. The human ambassador managed to maintain his facade, but his two subordinates were unable to hide their surprise. Teloni smiled briefly.

"I apologize if she startled you. After our initial meeting, I took the liberty of adding your language to our translating software, so that if something were to happen to me, your people would not be required to go through another meld." The fact that it made their conversations far less private than they were likely expecting went tactfully unsaid. The human ambassador looked her in the eye and nodded. Message received. "Please, follow me. We have prepared a suitable meeting room for these deliberations."

The trio of humans followed sedately behind the asari pair, carefully stepping on and over mounds and depressions of what was once molten metal as they reached the doorway. A guilty look briefly passed over Torres' face and she mumbled an awkward apology to the asari. The matriarch waved it off. "It was unfortunate but in hindsight, understandable." She adopted a gently chiding tone. "Just, try not to repeat it."

With that, the quintet continued on, arriving at a sparsely, but richly, decorated room a few minutes later. A single table dominated the room, with chairs on either side for each delegation. They took their seats and discussion began. "I would like to begin this meeting by extending a formal apology on behalf of the Turian Hierarchy. The commander of the patrol that attacked your vessels was acting well beyond his mandate. We are prepared to offer reasonable reparations on their behalf."

The human ambassador considered the offer for a moment. "My superiors have displayed a strong interest in your people's technology. In light of the violation of our borders and the unprovoked attack on civilian vessels, leading to dozens of deaths, full schematics and designs for your FTL travel and communications technology, a list of all known issues and drawbacks, and the techniques used to generate the amazingly dense material used as armor on the Turian spacecraft would do a great deal to soothe their anger."

Teloni suppressed any surprise she may have felt at the request with centuries of experience. "I see." She paused for a moment as she considered the Council's mandate and her granted authority. That seemed a reasonable request in light of the Turian's behavior. Not to mention that if this meeting went as hoped, that information would be publicly available to them anyway. "I believe that is acceptable. Thalia, please ask the captain to prepare a datapad with the information. Make sure to include the translation suite." The aide nodded, moved to the door and passed the message to one of the guards outside before returning to her seat. So far, things were going well. Teloni only hoped they continued that way. "Now, on to more positive matters."

* * *

Isak Eklund wasn't sure what to make of these aliens, these asari. They looked so human, and at times acted it, that he had had to remind himself he was dealing with the representative of a potentially hostile alien polity. It did not help that his powers were proving less than useful on the Matriarch. He could sense nervous tension coiled beneath faux-confidence in her assistant, but the Matriarch may as well be a statue for all he could read from her.

Things appeared to be going well at least. She had agreed to his demands for reparations without a fight. That had surprised him. He never would have agreed to the reverse. In fact, the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. It was too easy; humanity had never had the privilege of easy. He didn't like it. He brought himself back to the present as Teloni's aid reseated herself. Too late to worry about that now, he'd just have to be more careful going forward.

"Yes, let's," Isak agreed with his counterpart. He regarded her for a long moment. "I will be blunt. I do not trust you." Teloni calmly returned his stare. "My people were put through hell the last time we met an alien race, and your attack dogs made one hell of a poor first impression. I appreciate the gestures you have made here, but it will take time for trust to be earned."

The matriarch nodded. "I understand completely, Ambassador. I am here precisely to earn that trust."

"Thank you. Now, we can start with precisely who you represent and what you hope to gain from this meeting."

"I am an Asari, from the planet Thessia. Approximately 2600 years ago, my people allied with the Salarians to found the Citadel Council. The Council is a representative government that wields a great deal of influence over member species. There are currently three full members and five associate members. Full members are granted the right of representation on the Council itself and associate members are able to petition the Council to address their issues." Teloni paused to take a breath, and Eklund decided to speak.

"Am I to assume you wish my people to join as an associate member?" He was rather incredulous at the thought, though his training and experience kept it from his face or voice. Humanity had killed the last aliens that tried to subjugate them. He wasn't going to be the one to undo all those sacrifices.

"All I wish for is peace," Teloni countered serenely. "I cannot deny that your people would be a welcome addition to the Citadel, but I am far more interested in stopping senseless loss of life." Isak chuckled internally, that was a yes. It would be worth hearing their offer however. Turning away allies for the sake of pride wouldn't reflect too well on his career.

"I think we both can agree to that," Eklund agreed. "My people have no interest in starting a war." That humanity would not hesitate to finish one went unsaid, but Teloni clearly heard it anyway.

"Excellent," Teloni began. "With the information you have already requested, can we move past Captain Thrankus' rank stupidity? 'Water under the bridge', I believe the saying is?" Isak started slightly at that, surprised by the asari's understanding of human idioms. He shook it off after a moment, Lieutenant Torres' report had mentioned the asari trying to find cultural norms in the first meld. It would make sense that she had learned such a common saying.

"Yes, that is acceptable," Eklund said, but he felt it necessary to clarify the situation. "However, we will be keeping any and all captured technology and assets from the Turian vessels."

Teloni frowned briefly. "I believe that will be acceptable, but the Turian Hierarchy would greatly appreciate the return of any remains you may have acquired."

Eklund considered the request. The last of the turian captives had expired several days ago under interrogation, and most of the corpses bore signs of their treatment. Still, there were a handful of intact corpses, waiting for the scientists to discover a proper use of their exoskeleton. The rest could be discretely disposed of and claimed to not have been found. "We will see what can be done. However, please bear in mind that most of the corpses that were found were incinerated. We were not concerned with proper burials for our attackers."

"That is unfortunate," Teloni smiled sadly at him. "We would truly appreciate whatever you can do." Eklund was sure he felt a flash of guilt from the Lieutenant at his side. He couldn't blame her; XCOM had never been friendly to its captives. The reminder that they had families was poignant. At least she managed to not show it, he had to give her credit for that. The ambassador smiled lightly and bowed to the matriarch.

"As you say. Now, to the matter of a peace agreement." The matriarch nodded. "We do not require much. Do you have a map of the galaxy somewhere?" A holographic display of the Milky Way abruptly appeared above the table. "Excellent. We have claimed most of the space immediately surrounding Earth, our homeworld. Roughly this area." Isak drew a sphere surrounding the human sphere of influence. "Our terms for peace are simple. Your people will not cross our borders without permission, nor will they initiate hostilities, or 'enforce Citadel law'" Eklund said with a trace of sarcasm. "against us. Nor shall your people activate Mass Relays that link to human space. And finally, any of your people in human space will be subject to our laws. If you can abide by these terms, we will return the favor."

* * *

The human terms were not much beyond the Matriarch's expectations. The prohibition on Relay activation was a surprise though. She supposed it made sense, these humans were clearly untrusting. Letting alien powers open doors into their space couldn't sit well with them. "I can agree to those terms, if you agree to disclose all of your military assets outside, or near the borders to, your agreed territory and what Relays have been activated in same. Now and whenever a change occurs with either." Teloni rejoined. Eklund frowned as she finished, but eventually he nodded sharply. "I would also formally request that you do not activate any Relays unless you know what is on the other side. Reckless activation of Relays has brought the Citadel Council to the brink of destruction in the past."

"I see no reason to refuse your request." The man turned to his aide. "However, we will not divulge military assets that are on our side of the border." Teloni locked eyes with Eklund, each trying to stare the other into submission. Finally, she relented with a wave. "Donnel, when we return, please ask the Commodore to start compiling the information for the Matriarch." The assistant tapped a strange pattern onto his forearm, where a clearly synthetic implant resided, and nodded at the Ambassador. Eklund turned back to the asari. "I can at least answer the question of Relays now, Matriarch." Teloni schooled her expression into simple curiosity and he continued. "None." The word, delivered flatly and without care, brought her mind screeching to a halt.

"Wh-What?" Teloni managed to sputter, her attention torn between the human and the area of the galaxy he had indicated as theirs. Eklund looked distinctly pleased at her overt reaction. The subtle grin on his face was enough for her to force herself back into composure. "You mean to claim that your people control that much space without the use of the Mass Relays?"

The Ambassador nodded. At her exasperated look, he decided to explain. "Shortly after the Ethereal War, we began expanding from our homeworld. The first planet we explored was one orbit out from our own. On it, we found a ruin. A _Prothean _ruin." The way he bit out the word 'Prothean' set Teloni's scalp curling.

"You say that as if the Protheans were an enemy," she said, probing into his distaste. "Whatever could have angered you so?"

The Ambassador's voice was tight as he explained. "They are little better than the Ethereals." Both present asari went absolutely still. These humans had just equated the venerated precursors with genocidal maniacs! Eklund snorted at their unease. "They were kidnapping and experimenting on our ancestors. When they come back to finish the job, we'll return the favor."

Teloni arched a brow. "The Protheans have been extinct for 50,000 years," she said, matter-of-factly. "They won't be returning." And if they somehow did, Teloni wasn't about to let them near humanity.

It was Eklund's turn to adopt a look of shock, but it was his assistant that voiced what all three humans were clearly thinking. "Really?" Both Teloni and Thalia nodded. Udina sagged slightly and let out a breath. "That's... well, if it's true, that is incredibly comforting" The other humans looked equally relieved. Teloni was more than a little bewildered.

Eklund apparently noticed her confusion, despite her attempts to hide it, and explained. "The Ethereals did as they did for a reason. They were running from something, preparing to someday meet it. We were to be added to their collective to face whatever this threat was. When we found the Prothean ruin and the records it contained, we concluded that the threat was the Protheans." Teloni was not sure what to make of that. She supposed it made sense if she made some mental gymnastics, but she couldn't imagine reaching that conclusion without help.

With a mental shrug she moved on. Human logic was theirs to deal with. "I must admit to being confused by the logic, but it does explain why you have not activated any Relays." Eklund gave her a nod. "But how do you control so much space without them?"

"As you have no doubt already seen, we have developed our own means of interstellar travel," Eklund explained briefly. "I do not know the mechanical details, but in essence we link two points in space-time by a portal, allowing instantaneous travel from one side to the other." Teloni only managed to contain her surprise because she was mostly expecting it. "It has served us quite well for traversing our space."

"That is... most impressive," Teloni said, clearly understating things. She swallowed and forged ahead. "We have much to learn from each other."

* * *

Making a mental note to advise the Commander to verify the fate of the Protheans, Isak Eklund's thoughts moved to considering what the Ethereals were truly scared of. Whatever it was, the technology and knowledge of this Citadel Council, not to mention their manpower, would be a massive asset against such a foe. "Indeed we do. It is my hope that our peoples can live together and help each other into the future."

"A noble sentiment," Teloni agreed, favoring the man with a smile. "The first step on such a journey would be one of trade."

"Of course," Eklund said. "My superiors are very interested in opening trade. Unfortunately, many of my people would not be comfortable with aliens within our borders. The scars simply run too deep." He scowled. Even after over a century, the Ethereals were still damaging humanity.

Teloni sighed. "Yes, I had imagined they would. We would very much like to welcome humanity into the galactic community however. Is there nothing that can be done?"

"There is always a solution, Matriarch." Eklund took a deep breath, unsure of his next proposal, for more than one reason. "My people have historically been explorers and wanderers. There are always many who are not satisfied with what is at hand, they must always find new places, go where no human has gone before." The matriarch gave him a quizzical look. He took it as an encouraging sign. "Are there any unclaimed areas of space outside our borders, somewhere on the Relay network that you clearly use, that we could settle?" Eklund sensed a sudden surge of well-disguised surprise in the asari. He proceeded to justify the request, to himself as much as the asari. "Your people have vastly superior knowledge of the network, and we do not wish to step on any toes. On top of that, many of my people would jump at the chance to explore, and such colonies would make for excellent trading posts, without risking any unfortunate acts from the more extreme portions of our populous. It would also allow my people a way to gradually adjust to the concept of peaceful integration."

The asari contemplated the suggestion for quite a while. "That is indeed an excellent compromise, but I hope you will understand that I must discuss it with my superiors before agreeing to anything." Eklund nodded, having expected such a requirement. "However, this area of space," she waved a hand through a space that surprisingly enough bordered the human sphere. "Known to us as the Attican Traverse, is largely wild and unsettled worlds, with well known paths to and from via the Mass Relays. If the Council agrees to your proposal, it would almost certainly be within this area."

Eklund studied the map, making special note of the marked lines of relay travel. "That would be most excellent. I look forward to hearing your Council's response." Eklund then grew serious. "However, before we proceed, there are several aspects of our technology, and what we are willing to trade, to discuss before this goes any further." The matriarch echoed his expression.

"First, you must understand that many of the technologies that you have witnessed are military secrets. We are not willing to sell these on the open market, and we fully expect you to do the same." Teloni nodded, so he continued. "Second, most of our technology relies heavily on our psionic abilities to function or create."

"I'm sorry, but what are 'psionic abilities'?"

"Psionics were the evolution of our species that the Ethereals hoped to find," Eklund said simply. "They are the ability of a sentient being to enforce their will upon reality." Teloni's brow furrowed.

"What does that mean?"

"A large portion of our population, roughly one in every four, is able to control the fundamental forces of the universe in some way using only their mind. In other words, psychic powers." The shock and disbelief was obvious on both asari's face. "Psionic abilities come in a wide variety of forms, ranging from application of extreme physical force to the creation and operation of wormholes, and it is the basis from which many pieces of our technology are built."

The asari were definitely not expecting that. Teloni managed a few sputtering noises before Eklund took pity on her. "The Ethereals forced us to harness the ability. We rose to the challenge, far better than even they were expecting."

"Tha- that is a rather massive claim," Teloni finally managed to get out. "I hope you will not take offense when I say I am somewhat skeptical." Eklund frowned.

"Very well. Donnel, a demonstration if you please. From here to the other end of the room."

"Yes sir." The aide turned a focused glare into the distance. A moment later, a surge of purple light flared right before the asari's eyes and swiftly formed into a hole in the air, hovering serenely behind the human delegation.

"As you can see," and at this, Eklund stood and turned to the portal to see the backs of the asari delegation. He took a step and his next words came from behind the stunned asari. "It is no fabrication." The asari jumped and spun to face the man.

"W-Well, that is cer- certainly new," Teloni stuttered. She shook her head violently and brought the discussions back on track. Eklund could feel the iron walls of discipline clamping down on her emotions. "But what does this have to do with trade?"

"As I mentioned, many of our technologies rely heavily on psionics, either to produce or operate. Most of them we are willing to trade, but some of them you will need either a human operator or to find another race of psionics, and if the records we recovered from the Ethereals are correct, very few species have such abilities."

"Can you give some examples?" Teloni asked. "My superiors and I would like to know what we could expect to require a human operator for."

"The most obvious is the one you've just seen," Eklund said, stepping back through the portal and re-taking his seat as it closed behind him. "Wormholes require a psionic's active participation to open. We have tried nearly everything, from using machines to cloned and disembodied brains, but nothing except the willing participation of a psionic has ever achieved useful results." Eklund paused to verify the message was understood. "However, my people create and use goods for all manner of purposes and endeavors, with all manner of operators. The lack of psionic abilities does not impede any of my people from enjoying the full fruits of our labors. I am quite sure the same will be true of your people."

"That is encouraging," Teloni said. "I must confer with the Council before any official agreements can be cemented, but from what I have seen here, it seems likely we will have a trade agreement very soon." Teloni then moved to the final subject of the negotiation. "The last item I feel necessary to discuss here is the treatment of Prothean artifacts."

Eklund felt his brow climb at that. "They're ancient relics. What about them?"

The ambassador could feel the matriarch's displeasure clearly. "I do not know how your people have treated them, but my own have learned a great deal from these ruins. The Protheans were unparalleled masters of element zero based technology. It was they who built the Mass Relays and the Citadel." Teloni explained passionately. "My people place great value upon the mysteries of the Protheans, and it is a standing Citadel law that all Prothean artifacts are to be shared amongst all members. We cannot force you to comply, but I formally request that any you find be shared with the Council."

Eklund considered the request. "We can comply on one condition." The asari made a noise of interest. "We will notify the Council of any Prothean artifacts, but anything we find will remain under our control. Your people can examine it under our supervision, and anything they find must be shared with us."

"That is reasonable," Teloni conceded, though Eklund could tell she was unhappy about it. "If there is nothing else to discuss," she trailed off with an inquisitive look. Eklund shook his head in a negative and the Matriarch climbed to her feet. "Then I will escort you back to your shuttle."

"Thank you." The human delegation rose as well and followed her out of the room. "I look forward to a lasting friendship between our peoples."

* * *

The Citadel Council was composed of the three most powerful and influential sapient beings in the galaxy. And they were currently squabbling like maidens. Teloni could feel the headache forming between her eyes. Shortly after their delegation had left, the humans had sent over a historical packet and a brief summation of psionics and some of their technologies that required them. Teloni had reciprocated with the Council's history before forwarding the new information to the Council. She was beginning to regret the latter.

"There is absolutely no way this information is accurate," Councillor Octavian said firmly. He waved a datapad through the air as he repeated his argument for the fifth time in as many minutes. "Psychic powers?! It must be some new form of biotics!"

"Maybe," the Salarian Councillor agreed. "But they have no reason to lie. Given what we have seen from them, I'm tempted to believe it. We certainly cannot casually alter the fabric of space-time. That they can run rings around your fleet is no reason for this fit of jealousy, Octavian."

"You- We have potentially hostile aliens in our backyard who can easily avoid our every precaution against attack and you think I'm _jealous_?!" he thundered. "These humans," he spit out the word as if revolted by the taste. "Are a clear and present danger to the whole of Citadel Space."

"Which is why we have established peaceful relations, Councillor. With any luck, they will be no more of a danger to us than the Turians are." Councillor Tevos cut in easily. Octavian flared his mandibles and made to speak, but Tevos continued right over him. "Matriarch Teloni, what are your thoughts on our new... allies?"

"They are scared, Councillors." Teloni concluded simply. "They carry great cultural scars, all from this 'Ethereal War'. It is my judgment that they must be treated as wild caiths back on Thessia. Leave some food outside the door and walk away. Let them approach at their own pace and soon enough they will have moved inside."

"An apt comparison," the Turian Councillor remarked. He continued the analogy without missing a beat."But such wild animals need to be treated with caution as well."

"Of course," Tevos said. "In that vein, the humans' request would be perfect. If we were to grant colonization rights to select places in the Attican Traverse, we could keep them contained and under observation as well as gain access to their technology."

"Agreed," Jaroll chimed in. "Let them have this area." The Salarian tapped his omnitool and a picture of the galaxy sprung to life, a small portion of the Attican Traverse highlighted in green. "My people could observe their settlement protocols and technology, on top of whatever we gain from trade."

"Oh very well. Let them have it," Octavian capitulated with poor grace. "My people will be keeping a wary eye on them however."

"I would expect nothing less," Tevos agreed. "Hopefully, it will not be needed." The Councillors turned to their emissary. "You have done very well today, Matriarch. You have our gratitude."

"Thank you, Councillors," she said and the holograms winked out. Hopefully humanity would be able to integrate with the Council. She thought of the melted ruin of the ship's docking area and the casual display of psionics during the negotiations with a shiver. She did not want to be their enemy.

_**Codex Entry (Humanity and XCOM)**_  
_Humans have a fairly robust physiology. Their internal makeup and reproductive processes are typical of most bipedal mammals, and their biology favors extended stamina over extreme physical ability. This stamina is reflected in their culture and mindset as well. Humanity simply refuses to quit under pressure. In fact, they only grow stronger from it. Humans are also well known for their uncanny ability as scavengers. Due to the events of the Ethereal War, adaptation and rapid technological advancement has become synonymous with survival for the human species. As such, the species rabidly pursues new forms of technology whenever they are encountered, and progress at a rate that is astonishing to most council races. While it has created many beneficial breakthroughs, this pursuit of knowledge is widely regarded as reckless among most council species._

_Humanity formally united their entire species under the Human Coalition, or 'The Coalition' in the wake of their first contact with alien life, an event that has become known as the Ethereal War. The Coalition serves as a moderating body in the face of the many wildly varying cultures and societies of humanity, remnants from before unification. Their military arm is known as the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM._

_XCOM was founded in 2015 to combat an invading alien collective led by an extremely powerful species known as Ethereals. This collective killed over ten percent of the human population over the course of 9 months of conflict, and firmly cemented human distrust of extraterrestrials. XCOM ultimately proved victorious over the Ethereals and led human expansion into space._

_Humans first came to the attention of the galactic community after a brief conflict with the Turians near Relay-314 which took place in 2157._


	5. Violence

**Chapter 4: Violence**

_**Codex Entry (Psionics)**_  
_Some, but not all, humans have been found to exhibit strange abilities not found among other races. The closest equivalent is Biotics, but Psionic abilities are clearly distinct. Psionics do not require element zero nodules or a physical mnemonic, and all are heralded by a flare of purple light instead of the traditional biotic blue. Reportedly, human history has recorded cases of Psionics before Element Zero was ever discovered, and some Psionic abilities are impossible to replicate using mass effect fields._

_Very little concrete information is known about Psionics. Humanity has only shared that there are four classification of psionics: Direct for creation and application of physical force, Indirect for mental manipulation of a target, Transport for wormhole creation, and Communication for empathy and telepathy. Observed and confirmed abilities include: telekinesis, point-to-point wormhole creation, telepathy, panic induction, and the creation of defensive fields of lesser strength but covering a far larger volume than biotic barriers._

_Speculative rumours claim humans can also read minds, control sentient beings as puppets, create blocks of ice or balls of fire, levitate or fly, vanish from sight, hypnotize or brainwash individuals with a glance, or tear even armored krogan apart. Whatever the truth is, human psionics are widely regarded as one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy._

_**Codex Entry (Human Diplomatic Relations)**_  
_Humanity has been a welcome, if contentious, entry on the galactic stage. Since they have been introduced, they have settled a handful of worlds in the Attican Traverse and proceeded to upend many aspects of Citadel culture. Their technologies have revolutionized the areas of energy generation and direct energy weapons. However, many residents of Citadel Space resent the Coalition for carefully hoarding the secrets of Elerium creation by using the excuse of psionic requirements._

_The Coalition is a peaceful trade partner of all three of the leading Council races. While there was some initial tension between humanity and the Turians caused by the Relay-314 Incident, most Turians have come to respect humanity's military culture and zeal for their own safety._

_The Coalition occasionally comes to a head with the Salarian Union, usually led by the words "That should not be possible!". Human technology has driven many a Salarian researcher to the ragged edge of sanity, and, in many ways, endeared the Coalition to the Salarian Union for it._

_The Krogan have no unified government, but individuals are generally treated as potential criminals, a reputation most krogan enjoy living down to._

_The Coalition has no formal contact with the Quarians. Their Migrant Fleet has not yet passed through any human-controlled system._

The Batarians are rivals for control of the Attican Traverse. They severely protested the Citadel's grant to the Coalition. There have been no incidents yet, but tensions with the Batarian Hegemony have been rising ever since.

* * *

"God this place is boring," the young man griped as he set himself on the edge of the porch. He turned to his older companion. "Why the hell did we move out here Dad?"

"You know why John," his father heaved a long-suffering sigh. "Your mother and I needed to get away. A fresh start. This is the first colony to start after the Attican Gate went up last year. We couldn't get a fresher start than that. Not to mention the opportunities. People on the fringe worlds have been making money hand over fist the last fourteen years."

"Bah, screw the money. Why couldn't I stay back on Londinium?" John sagged in place. "I miss my friends," he choked out. A sad look passed over his father's face.

"I'm sorry about all this John. I know it's hard on you." The man sat down beside his son and threw an arm over the teenager's shoulders. "Tell you what, tomorrow we'll take the ATVs out. Just you, me and a day of chasing each other all over the hills out there." A smile forced its way onto the kid's face. "Hell, I may even let you win this time."

"As if!" John crowed with a triumphant grin. "I think your memory's starting to go old man. I seem to remember beating you last time!"

The man caressed his chin in thought as he regarded his son. "Is this what they call the delusions of youth?" He said wonderingly, just loud enough to be heard. John elbowed him with a grin. "Ouch, that was definitely the rage of youth. Damned kids."

The pair grinned at each other. "Thanks Dad, I needed that."

"It's what I'm here for kiddo." The pair sat in silence for a long minute, enjoying the other's presence. Eventually, the elder broke the silence. "Need a favor from ya. Your ma sent me out here to ask you to run out to the market and pick us up some onions and peppers. Said something about meatloaf."

An excited look crossed the boy's face. "Really? Awesome!" The man slapped some money in the kid's hand.

"Sooner you get back, the sooner she can start cooking," he reminded the boy, who saluted and turned to run off.

"Be back soon," he called. "Come on Rex." The canine robot rolled to its feet from where it had been resting under the porch. "We're going into town." The robot barked and surged after the boy as he scampered off.

* * *

Walking through the only town on Mindoir never failed to make John Shepard feel out of place. He couldn't help but compare the small freshly-built colonial structures with the massive skyscrapers of Londinium he had spent 15 years among. He wasn't meant for the rural life. There was no bustle here. Nothing to do and no one to do it with. He hated it. The dog-shaped robot at his side nuzzled the boy's hand. He reached out and rubbed the dog's head. Moving out here wasn't all bad though, if nothing else it had brought him and Rex together.

Still, he couldn't wait for them to finish the trading post. At least then he would have something new to do. Back on Londinium, he had heard all the stories, beautiful blue-skinned women descending on the place en masse alongside all sorts of fantastic aliens he could scarcely imagine. He may even get to meet a _Krogan_! He grinned at the thought. That would be enough to send the boys back home into a jealous fit.

So lost in thought was he that he almost walked past the store in his distraction. He would have missed it entirely were it not for Rex clamping onto his sleeve. John slammed to a stop and backpedaled to the door, walking inside to the soft chime of the motion sensor. "John Shepard!" the shopkeeper greeted heartily. A bark rang out carrying a hint of reprimand. "And Rex of course." The dog barked happily. "It is good to see you again my boy."

John wasn't entirely comfortable with the familiarity of the shop's owner, but he couldn't find it in himself to be mad about it. "Hello Mr. Martin."

"It's Fred, John. No need to be so formal." John squirmed slightly under the shopkeep's gaze. "Bah, at least you're being polite," the man dismissed it with a shrug. "What can I get for you today?"

"Ma sent me out to pick up some onions and red peppers," he said simply. His stomach rumbled as he thought about it. "She's making meatloaf for dinner." One of the AI, or VI John supposed it should be called out here, drones behind the counter took to the air and puttered off towards the back of the store.

"Hah! I'll have to remember to swing by sometime and grab some leftovers." Martin met his gaze for a heartbeat. "Though from the look in your eye, I don't think there's going to be any."

"You got that right." John agreed. "If there's any left after tonight, I haven't done my job."

The shopkeep smiled. "Good lad." The VI drone flew back as he finished with a selection of produce in its claws. John poked through it and picked out the best pieces before passing some money to the man behind the counter. "Thanks. Here's your change, and tell your folks I said hi." John took the proffered currency and pocketed it as he made his way out the door with a wave.

"C'mon Rex, time to head home." The dog barked and followed him out. The pair started ambling towards home, thoughts of home-cooked meatloaf filling at least one of their minds. They hadn't made it more than a block before a bright light streaked across the sky. "What th-" The light disappeared behind a building, but a moment later the late afternoon stillness erupted in an explosion of sound and motion. The ground shook, throwing John to the earth clutching his ears. An instant that stretched to eternity passed before stillness returned. He climbed to his feet to see a giant plume of smoke rising into the air from the south side of town. A chill shot down his spine. The colony's defense force was garrisoned to the south.

A siren erupted moments later, confirming his worst fears as dark shapes appeared in the sky. Rex whined quietly. Mindoir was under attack. "This is not good."

John locked up with panic as the attacking ships grew larger. Rex whined and gave his sleeve a hard tug, nearly pulling the boy over. He stumbled and flung himself against the nearest wall, eyes glued to the descending ships. "Oh god..." he moaned out. "WhatdoIdowhatdoIdowhatdoIdo?" rolled out of his mouth and he began shivering violently.

Rex took the opportunity to bite his hand, hard. He yelped and rounded on the dog, but calmed quickly when it whined and headbutted his hand. He heaved a breath. At least he wasn't panicking anymore. "Thanks boy." He calmed his thoughts as much as he could and realized one important fact. "Jenny!" he almost screamed. "She came into town a couple hours ago. We need to find her!"

Rex barked. "Can you find her?" Another bark. "Good boy. Lead the way." The robotic dog yipped and ran off, John hot on its heels. He needed to find her before these ships landed. There was no telling what these aliens would do to his sister.

The pair blitzed through the streets of Mindoir, trying to track her down. At least, they were until Rex came crashing to a halt at one corner. John almost tripped over the robot and went flying into the street, but managed to snag a drainage pipe at the last second. "Wh-" he started to yell, but the dog jumped on him with a very soft growl and put its paws on his mouth. "Oh," he whispered. "What's going on?".

Rex twitched its head towards the corner before climbing off him. John inched his way to the edge and took a look around. The main square was a couple blocks down the street, and an alien ship had just landed in it. The ship was easily the size of any of the buildings spread around it. John felt a chill at the sight. A door slid open on the side of the enormous ship and aliens in muted armor and carrying rifles of some sort came out. John ducked back instantly, his back pressed desperately against the wall he sheltered behind. He prayed with everything he had that they wouldn't come his way. He slowly turned back to the corner, inching an eye past it. Shit. At least three of the aliens had started marching his way. He could see two more behind them breaking open the door to one of the houses on the square.

The door gave with a loud crack, and the distinctive zap of laser rifle fire rang out. One of the aliens at the door fell backwards, clutching the stump of what used to be its hand. Its partner gave a guttural roar and threw something into the house. The house exploded, throwing clouds of smoke out into the square. John almost panicked again at the sight, but Rex nudged his side at the last moment. The panic receded as icy determination welled up in its stead. His sister was counting on him to save her, not run around like the headless chicken he so desperately wanted to emulate. He grabbed a small rock off the ground and chucked it up and over the building he hid behind. It landed on the far side with a clatter. The aliens advancing toward him all turned as one and ran to investigate. He heaved a breath and sprinted across the street, Rex on his heels.

The pair continued in that vein for several blocks, accompanied by the crack of laser rifles, the staccato roar of slug throwers or worse, explosions. The pair turned or hid whenever they saw even the slightest hint of the aliens until finally they ended up huddling in a back alley somewhere in the middle of town. He collapsed against the wall and slid to the ground. "Oh god, this is not happening. It's all a dream," he muttered to himself, sure that if he repeated it enough he'd even start to believe it. "I'm gonna wake up any second now and realize I'm late for school." He sobbed. "God... why'd I wish it to be less boring?"

Rex whined quietly. John hugged it, taking all the comfort he could manage from the machine. "Thanks boy." He sniffed harshly and rubbed his eyes. "You've done good." Its tail started wagging. He tried to compose himself as best he could as he calmed slightly. "Now, can you lead me to Jenny from here?" A quiet bark. John climbed to his feet. "Alright, let's go then."

John carefully followed behind the robot as it led the way out of the alley. They emerged onto the street and took off to the southwest. The pair wound slowly through the streets of Mindoir, ducking into hiding at every sound. After several minutes of scurrying, they emerged less than a block from one of the alien ships. John threw himself back around the corner before the single guard standing around it could see him.

"Which way from here?" he asked the dog. It jerked its head around the corner and made a low noise. "Crap." John risked another glimpse down the street. The guard was simply standing there, loosely clutching some sort of rifle. How was he going to get past the bastard? "We don't have time for this," John muttered. "We need to get past him." Rex yipped sharply and shot around the corner. "Wh- Rex!" he hissed. "Get back here!"

The dog ignored him and rushed straight at the guard. The alien started and swiftly brought its rifle to bear. It zeroed in on the dog and seemed to be confused for a moment, long enough for the dog to close the distance. It threw itself backwards as Rex crashed into it, carrying both to the ground. The staccato roar of assault rifle fire filled the courtyard. John ducked back around the corner, eyes darting wildly for the aliens that were sure to be attracted by the noise.

Muffled roars and scuffling rang out until the rifle abruptly went silent. John poked his head out and saw Rex standing proud over the corpse of the alien, yellow blood pooling around it and staining the dog's muzzle. John heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank god." He shot over to the dog. "You worried me there boy." Rex whined and put its head in his hand. "Good job." John gave a disgusted look at the corpse. "Yuck." He reached down and hesitated inches from the body, not quite willing to touch it. He fought with himself for a long moment before he completed the motion and pulled the rifle out of the alien's hands. It didn't need it and he sure as hell did. He hefted the rifle to his shoulder, trying to get used to the weight. He aimed at a nearby wall and pulled the trigger. His suddenly sore shoulder protested, but he fought it down. "Alright. Alright, I can do this," he murmured. "Get me to Jenny, Rex."

The dog took off down the street with John close behind. Several minutes and a few close calls later, Rex yipped and ducked behind some trash cans. John threw himself down beside the dog. A terse, guttural call rang out in some alien language, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. John risked a look over the lid of the cans and recoiled at the sight. Four of the aliens were leading half a dozen handcuffed people across the next street, screaming at and shoving them whenever one slowed or stumbled. Halfway across the street, one of the men in the group shoved the nearest alien to the ground and sprinted away, directly towards his hiding place! "Oh god no," John breathed, knowing what was coming. Alien rifles erupted and John's ears rang.

The man collapsed mid-step with something between a sob and a moan, tumbling to the ground and rolling to a stop just past the cans John hid behind. The aliens roared with laughter and shoved their remaining prisoners further down their route. John's grip tightened on his captured rifle and he started to raise it to his shoulder but froze as sense reasserted itself. He fought his instincts that were screaming at him to kill the alien bastards. Finally, the aliens took their captives out of his view and he collapsed behind the trash cans. He started shivering violently, eyes locked on the fresh corpse laying in a spreading pool of red. Eventually, Rex nudged him with a whine.

John flinched violently, knocking over one of the trash cans in the process. The ensuing cacophony sent the pair scrambling away from any potential investigators. The dog surged to the front and led John further through the streets. A few minutes later, Rex slowed to a walk outside a house. The front door had been violently torn open and pieces of it filled the room beyond. Rex whined at him and deliberately pointed towards the house. John's heart sank. "She's in there isn't she?" Rex nodded. "Wonderful." John readied his rifle and moved as stealthily as he could towards the house, following inches behind Rex.

The pair approached the door cautiously, John's head turning constantly to try and see every direction at once. Horrid scenarios played out in the back of his mind, getting bloodier with every step closer to the building. An eternity later, they reached the gaping hole that was once a door. John drew from every half-remembered military vid he'd ever seen, especially the old documentaries from the Ethereal War. He flattened himself against the wall beside the door frame and let his rifle lead the way around the corner, eyes darting wildly to take in the whole room at once.

A silent, destroyed area that had once been a living room met his gaze. The large couch was upended, while knick-knacks and small puddles of red he really didn't want to think about covered the floor. Some kind of struggle had clearly taken place here. John swallowed heavily and moved deeper into the building. He was tempted to call out for Jenny, but he couldn't risk giving his presence away. Soon enough, he reached the only other door in the room and stepped into the kitchen.

The kitchen wasn't any better. Cabinets and drawers hung wide open and food, utensils and pans lay everywhere. John didn't notice any of it however, his attention firmly caught by the bloody hand and arm extending out from behind the central island. He rushed around the island without a thought and managed a single step before his foot slid off the bloodslicked tile, sending him ass over teakettle. He landed with a thud on the edge of a large pool of blood, the rifle bouncing out of his hands. "Owwwww," he groaned, eyes shut tight against the pain. He rolled over to start climbing to his feet and opened his eyes to a familiar face.

"Mrs. Arora!" he cried, recognizing the mother of one of his sister's friends. He scrambled through the blood to the woman's side and rolled her onto her back. She flopped over limply, several gaping holes throughout her torso. "Oh god!" John recoiled, pulling back his hands as if burned. He fell back and crabwalked away as fast as he could, slipping and sliding in the blood until his head made contact with the wall with a solid thump. "Fuck!" he half-screamed. "Why is this happening?!"

Rex made to come towards him, but a sudden thump from down the hall sent both boy and dog twirling. John threw himself on the discarded rifle and pointed it down the hall, primed and ready to unload at whatever came out. A long minute passed in silence as no one dared move. Slowly, John climbed to his feet, taking great pains to keep the rifle pointed down the hallway at all times. Without warning, a cupboard flew open halfway down the hall. John's finger was halfway through pulling the trigger by the time he realized the occupant that had come charging out was a little girl instead of a bloodthirsty alien.

"John!" she cried, tears thick in her voice. She catapulted straight into his legs and threw her arms around his waist, squeezing tightly and burrowing her face in his stomach.

"J-Jenny?!" John stuttered out. He threw the rifle away and grabbed his sister in the biggest hug he could manage. "You're alright!" Both children held each other and cried for a few long minutes, equally relieved and terrified.

The eight year old girl finally released her hold and took a step back, taking in the sight of her brother. Her jaw dropped. "You're hurt!" she cried, hands stained by the blood on his clothing hovering before her mouth. John looked away.

"It's- It's not mine," he managed to choke out. "I'm alright." The girl relaxed slightly. He pulled her into another hug. "What happened here? How'd you get away from them?"

She sniffed softly. "Mrs. Arora was teaching me how to bake cookies. W-When the siren started, she pushed me in the closet and said to stay hidden. I heard a boom and Mrs. Arora started screaming for Talitha!" Jenny ended somewhere between a sob and a scream. "Th- then I heard a whole bunch of bangs and Talitha was screaming and something shouted a- and they left. I- I think they took her!" John scowled angrily as Jenny latched back onto his waist. He put a hand on her back and held her softly.

"Shhhh, it'll be okay," he murmured. "I'll make sure of it, but I need you to be strong for me." He pried her off his leg and crouched down to look her in the eye. "Can you do that?"

"Okay," she sniffed. "I'll, I'll try."

John smiled encouragingly. "Good girl." Rex chose that moment to run up and brush himself against the little girl. She gave an almost involuntary giggle and hugged the robot. "Rex is glad to see you safe too." The girl nodded at him. He took a look around. "Alright, we need to get out of town. If we can get to the woods, we should be safe until XCOM shows up." Jenny nodded. John eyed her for a long moment. "Follow directly behind me and do exactly what I say and we'll get out of this, Jen." John turned, but only made it halfway before he remembered the body of Mrs. Arora right behind him. She didn't need to see that. He scooped up the again-discarded rifle and turned back to his sister. "Jenny, first thing is to close your eyes and take my hand."

The girl gave him a curious look, but complied. John grabbed her hand and slowly led her out of the house; rifle in one hand, eight year old in the other. Once they made it outside, he released her and told her to open her eyes. "We gotta get to the forest out east. Rex, lead the way." The dog yipped. "Jenny, stick close behind me. I won't let any of these bastards touch you."

"Yes sir!" she put on a brave face and pantomimed a military salute. John couldn't help but crack a wry grin at the sight and ruffled her hair.

"Keep being you sis," he said and the trio took off into the town, taking great pains to stay behind some kind of cover as much as they could.

* * *

Rex led the siblings through the streets to the east and they followed behind dutifully. Their course twisted and turned, sometimes even doubling back on itself as they tried to avoid the raiders. More than once, Jenny had started to cry, but John was able to keep her calm enough to keep moving. As they approached the east side of town however, the aliens started becoming more and more common.

The four-eyed bastards were seemingly around every corner. Which made for a bit of a problem when the unmistakable sound of armored boots on concrete sounded from somewhere behind the trio. John hurried the other two ahead, and threw a glance over his shoulder. No aliens were immediately visible, so he refocused on running. He turned back around just in time to slip on a loose piece of gravel and go tumbling forward past his companions, the rifle flying from his hands in the process.

John slammed to a halt in the middle of the street, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He opened his eyes with a groan that ended in a whimper as he recognized the form above him. "Well, well," the alien said, in remarkably good English. "What do we have here?" The thing kicked him in the stomach, and John curled into a tight ball from the pain. He glared hard at the alien as it stood above him. "You've got spirit at least. The boss will enjoy breaking you."

The alien's partner said something in their guttural tongue, and it barked a response. "Get up human." John just lay there, glaring. "If that's how you want to do it," the thing said with a shrug and it raised its rifle. John stared down the frankly enormous barrel and prayed Jenny had the sense to be far away by now.

Time seemed to slow as alien's finger tightened on the trigger. A flash of silver filled his vision and the gun erupted, sending shards of metallic death scattering off the concrete to his left. The flow of time returned to normal as John recognized Rex ripping and tearing at the alien's arm. "Rex!" he cried as the alien's partner hefted its rifle and unloaded at the robot with an unholy clatter. Bullets filled the air and John tried to scramble back around the corner.

Rex threw all of its considerable weight at the first alien, taking it to the ground. Rex's jaws lashed out and tore the thing's throat open. Yellow blood flew through the air as the alien gurgled weakly. At the same instant, a hard crack echoed from the dog and its hind legs collapsed as it tried to charge the second alien, a large hole in its side. "Rex!" John yelled again. The dog dragged itself at the second alien, at a surprisingly good speed all things considered. It tried to throw itself at the alien, but without its hind legs, it simply couldn't get the leverage.

The bastard kicked the dog away and unloaded even more rounds into it, until with a fit of sparks Rex twitched a final time and lay still. "Rex!" John repeated himself for the third time, sorrow and rage thick in his voice. He whirled on the alien and froze when confronted with the barrel of another gun. He gulped heavily, paralyzed by indecision. His rage demanded retaliation for the loss of his dog, but his instincts screamed to flee. The alien muttered something in its language and tensed to fire. Suddenly, a semi-transparent blue wall sprung up around it and it flinched away from John. The staccato roar of assault rifle fire filled the street as the alien stumbled back, bullets filling the air around it. John threw himself away from the bullets, crawling behind a street light for cover.

The alien's shield only lasted a handful of seconds before sputtering out in a flash of sparks. Then sparks started to fly from its armor, until spouts of thick yellow blood started flowing from it in rivulets. The alien collapsed with a clatter, but the shots continued unabated. Several seconds later, the roar of assault rifle fire ended with a hiss. John poked his head out towards the sound only to see Jenny sitting on the ground, John's purloined rifle, which was the size of her torso, held between her knees and braced on her chest. The girl's eyes and trigger finger were squeezed tight.

"Jenny!" John cried as he scrambled over to the girl. "Jenny, you saved me!" He frowned deeply as he reached her. She was tauter than a bow, the gun shaking violently despite her position. John carefully pried the rifle out of her grip and threw it aside before scooping the girl into the biggest hug he could manage. She kept shaking in her brother's arms, eventually latching onto the boy. The tears came then, in a deep, heart-rending wail.

John carried her into a small alcove in the side of a nearby building and spent several minutes just holding her and letting her cry. He rubbed her back and cooed nonsense words, trying to assure her that it was alright. Eventually, the tears slowed to a series of quiet sobs. She hiccuped and pulled back from John slightly. "S-Sorry," she forced out to John's surprise. "I-I'm s-s-supposed to be st-strong, bu-"

"Jenny," John cut her off there with a soft smile. "Sis, you're plenty strong." He pulled her back into a hug. "Don't ever think you're not. You saved my life." Jenny hiccuped again. "Thank you." Jenny collapsed into the hug and the siblings spent another few minutes in relief that they were both still alive. Eventually though, John knew they would have to move. He broke the silence gently. "Do you think you can walk?" Jenny nodded into his chest. "Okay." John climbed to his feet and set the girl on hers. "Let's go."

John led the way back out onto the street. He paused briefly over Rex's ruined remains. He crouched beside the twisted electronics and spoke. "I dunno if you can hear this Rex, but when all this is over, I'm coming back for you." He blinked away tears. "If there's anything of you left in there, you'll be back. That's a promise."

John climbed to his feet and noticed Jenny was standing just outside the alcove they had sheltered in, staring blankly at the alien she had killed. He moved over to her and hugged her, forcibly turning her head away from the grisly sight. "It's alright sis," he whispered into her hair. "You saved me. That's the important thing." She hiccuped again. "I am so proud of you." Jenny returned the hug fiercely. John let her have a few seconds to compose herself before tugging her arms loose. "Sorry sis, but we need to get moving before more of them show up." Jenny sniffed and nodded. John picked up the nearest rifle, grabbed her hand and led her further to the east. "Let's go."

* * *

The siblings continued for almost a kilometer before an earthshaking whine forced them to stop. "W-What is that?" Jenny asked, barely audible over the roar. John squeezed her hand and pulled her off the street.

"No idea," John replied, just as the unmistakable shape of one of the alien ships rose above the rooftops. John felt a surge of hope at the sight. "It, It looks like they're leaving," he breathed out. Jenny started to cheer until he put a hand over her mouth. She gave him a look. "There's more than one ship, Jenny."

"Oh," she sagged in his grip. The whine of the spaceship's lift-off faded then, just in time for the siblings to pick up the sound of running footsteps behind them. Jenny's eyes went wide.

"Shit!" John breathed. "C'mon!" He grabbed his sister's hands and they started running. Less than a minute later, a pair of aliens led by some kind of mutant dog thing burst into view around a hundred meters down the street. The aliens made it obvious they'd been seen by breaking into a run straight at the siblings. "Fuck!" Jenny's grip on his hand tightened painfully. He turned to retreat, but the footsteps they'd been running from had caught up. A pair of aliens were closing the distance behind them rapidly.

John cast around wildly for an escape route, quickly settling on the restaurant across the street. "In there!" he cried, pushing Jenny in front of him and chasing her through the door before locking it behind them. They blitzed past the scattered tables and the counter stretching across three quarters of the room, going straight through to the kitchen and hopefully a back door. They found the door in short order, but it refused to move when John tried it. "Open goddamnit!" he cried as he threw his shoulder against it again and again. The steel door stood mute testament to the futility of his efforts.

A crunch from the front let them know that time was running out. John kicked the door again with a wordless scream. It remained as stable as ever. Another crunch came from the front. "Fuck!" John knew there was only one way out of this. He forcibly calmed himself and turned to his sister. His voice was tight as he said, "Find somewhere to hide and stay there until I get you." She nodded tearfully and slipped inside a nearby cabinet. "And sis," he said softly. She paused with the door hanging open. "I love you."

Jenny launched herself at him and squeezed his waist. "Come back or I-I'll never forgive you."

John nodded at her and put her back in the cabinet. "You got it." He hefted his rifle and rushed to the front, taking cover behind the counter as a third crunch sounded. He could see the door was on its last legs and tried to prepare himself for the coming fight. This was not going to be pleasant. The door finally gave, the mutant-dog-thing riding it to the floor. John's rifle burst to life, filling the air with shards of metallic death. Guttural oaths rang out and the creature made a noise of distress as it was riddled full of holes. It managed only a few drunken steps in his direction before collapsing with a sigh.

John felt fierce exultation at the sight. He was not going to let these things touch his sister. It did not last long however; the three aliens' return fire sent him stumbling back behind the counter. He scurried along the width of the counter in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. He reached the far end, where he found a door through the counter. He gently pushed it open and peaked through. One of the aliens had moved fully into the room and was nearing the far edge of the counter where he had started while the other two kept a constant stream of suppression fire going from the door. He grinned fiercely and brought his rifle to bear on the vulnerable bastard.

Bullets filled the air from a whole new angle before being intercepted by the alien's shield. John cursed under his breath but kept the trigger pressed. The alien tried to move, but there simply wasn't cover from his new firing angle. The alien's shields failed in short order and it collapsed at the edge of the counter with a scream moments afterwards. The aliens at the door started raining fire on his new position. "Shit!" John shouted as he scrambled back behind the counter.

Bullets zipped through the air above him, forcing John to keep low as he returned to his original position. He growled low in his throat and shoved his rifle over the counter and blind-fired at the aliens. Their fire sputtered out as they ducked away from the doorway. John popped out for a moment and grabbed one of the two small disks he had noticed stuck to the corpse's belt. John thumbed the only button and threw the disk through the door.

Unintelligible yelling rang out and the aliens threw themselves away. John took the opportunity to grab the second disk and throw himself forward, flipping over one of the tables and crouching behind it. He had barely settled into place when the thrown disk exploded. Pieces of the doorframe flew through the air as the grenade tore open a hole in the wall. John thumbed the second grenade and chucked it at the first alien he could see with a shout. The disk hit the thing on its back and stuck solidly. The alien roared and made to throw itself at the boy when the grenade exploded, raining yellow blood and giblets on everything in the air. John readied himself to deal with the last one when another explosion came _from behind him_. A scream rang out from the kitchen.

"Jenny!" he shouted, charging towards the back of the restaurant without a second thought. Smoke hung thick in the air, but he could make out some kind of large form through it. He brought up his rifle but paused as the shape gave a girlish squeal.

"Drop the gun," a low voice bit out. John's grip tightened. "Drop it or the girl dies." Another squeal punctuated its statement. The smoke faded to show John the fourth alien holding a wicked-looking pistol to Jenny's head. The girl was crying quietly, unable to move in its grip. John's heart sank. "I won't ask again. Drop the rifle." John threw the rifle away with an oath.

The alien shouted something and the surviving alien from out front came up behind the boy. It punched him in the kidney, hard. John fell to his knees and the alien crouched beside him. "I will take great pleasure in breaking you," it growled at him. John simply glared at the bastard. It grabbed his collar and hefted him to his feet. "Now get moving!" It shoved John out the door and down the street, its partner followed behind carrying Jenny under one arm.

* * *

The alien bastard shoved John into an open square between the buildings. He stumbled and nearly fell, to the great amusement of the aliens behind him. The first alien grabbed his arm and frog-marched him toward the ship resting in the middle of the square. John struggled futilely against his captor, mind racing for ways to at least get Jenny out of this. It was hard to think through the panic though, and by the time they'd reached the ship he hadn't come up with anything. He was pushed toward the door and glimpsed the people standing in individual cages lining the far wall. The alien indicated an open one with a pointed shove. Fuck that. He kicked back at his captor in a futile act of defiance.

The alien took the poorly coordinated blow with a sadistic laugh, barking something in its own language. Probably how it wanted to fuck its mother or something John guessed, and he said as much. The alien growled and backhanded the boy, sending him to the floor with a yelp. Jenny started screaming in the background as the alien lifted him half off the ground by his hair and punched him again.

The world was spinning lazily as John hung by his hair, but he could distantly see a faint purple blur erupt from around the second alien. He had just enough time to realize it before the thing holding his hair started shouting at its companion. He could recognize only the word "psi" in the gibberish and he couldn't help but feel vindication at the fear in its voice. The second alien yelped and _reacted_, throwing Jenny away from it. Any satisfaction he felt evaporated instantly.

"JENNY!" He screamed as his sister flew through the air. She hit the side of the ship with a disturbingly loud crack, tumbled to the earth, and lay still. John launched himself at the girl, screaming wildly. "JENNY!" The alien behind him grabbed him before he'd made a single step, and John snapped. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the still form of his little sister as he kicked, punched, clawed and bit at the thing holding him. "Leggo you son of a _fucking MUTON!_" he roared. It growled something in English at him, but he couldn't hear it over the roaring in his ears and the pain in his heart. Tears were pouring down his cheeks as he desperately tried to reach the little girl. The alien tried to haul him away and his struggles only increased, until with a roar it bodily lifted him up and threw him into a cage on the ship.

John hit the metal floor hard, but he burst back to his feet in an instant, charging toward the entrance of the ship even as it slammed close with a final-sounding thud. John threw himself at the solid metal bars that sealed his cage, screaming for his sister. Each shout was accompanied by a fierce pain searing through his chest. His tears refused to stop, even as fear and sorrow boiled into denial and rage. Everything went red and John began to beat on the bars, screaming obscenities at the aliens who had just hurt his family. Each blow rang louder than the last, and John could feel the bones in his hand start to crack, but he refused to stop. He wasn't going to stop until all of these sectoid-fuckers was dead.

Now that he knew his course, steely determination welled up behind the rage. Deep within him, below even conscious thought, he could feel it giving form to the formless. Flickers of purple he didn't even notice began to appear through the haze of rage as he continued to beat on the bars. He gave a shout of tormented anger and threw one final blow with everything he had.

The cage _exploded_. Bright purple light burst from his fist in a massive wave, tearing apart the bars of his cage before continuing directly into the hull of the ship. The wave hit the wall and tore through it with ease. The scream of tortured steel filled the air as the hull warped and twisted until a hole easily five meters across gaped open along its side.

Five aliens were scattered on the earth beyond, clearly thrown to the ground by whatever he had just done, but John only had eyes for his sister. Surrounded by a corona of psionic energy, he stampeded through the hole and to her side. She lay limp beside the ship, her head bent at an unnatural angle, eyes glassy and unseeing. John collapsed to his knees beside her, his tears redoubling in the face of the grim reality. He gently caressed her cheek. "I'm sorry sis," he sobbed out. "I am so sorry." Guilt, loss, and denial warred within him, causing the purple light around him to swirl in chaotic patterns. He spent what felt like an eternity simply kneeling there, crying over his sister's corpse.

A sudden commotion from the aliens behind him broke through the haze of loss and sorrow. Sorrow turned to rage. Rage turned to hate. Hate became the all-consuming need to inflict suffering. At that instant, he realized that he had but one purpose. The Muton-fuck-toys behind him deserved to die. They _all _deserved to die. The corona surrounding him surged even brighter. Small pieces of the surroundings began to lift off the ground, carried by the gentle caress of psionic power. Everything stopped. His bloodlust hung thick in the air.

John Shepard stood and turned to face the aliens, all of whom were paralyzed in fear. It was intoxicating to the boy. After what they had done, their fear was like the sweetest ambrosia. He grinned at the aliens. From their reactions, it wasn't a pleasant sight. Perfect. He took a step forward. As one, they took a step back.

"Tough, aren't you?" he asked, his voice full of the brittle calm of one on the ragged edge of control. "Where'd all your bravado go?" The aliens cowered further at the question. John's grin took on a manic quality. "That's alright. You don't need to answer. You just need to die." He flicked a hand at one. Purple flashed. The alien blinked stupidly at the new ten-centimetre-wide hole in its chest before collapsing bonelessly. The remaining aliens flinched violently.

He bared his teeth as they gathered themselves enough to fight back. Rifles were brought to bear on the boy and they threw themselves behind whatever cover they could find. John took the seething hate in his gut and directed it at the nearest target. Psionic energy swirled around it with a roar. It screamed shrilly as it was torn apart by the maelstrom of purple energy. The remaining aliens stared at their companion in shock as yellow blood and horrific screams filled the air. The alien died in under three seconds. As if it was a signal, the surviving aliens started firing wildly at the boy as what was left of the corpse hit the ground. John held a hand out in their direction and every single bullet came to a complete stop in a bed of purple light less than an inch from his hand.

The aliens' fire slowed as they stared at the boy in shock. He flicked his hand in a sweeping gesture, and every bullet before him was flung back at its origin. Shields flared and the aliens scrambled to duck behind their cover. Only two of them made it, the third collapsing full of holes. John burst into a run at the closest alien, clearing the distance in less than a second. He reared back and punched the alien in the head. A burst of psionic power tore it clear off the alien's shoulders. Yellow blood fountained, drenching John in the vile sludge.

He turned his attention to the last alien, who was on its back, scrambling away from him. It kept muttering something John couldn't understand as it backed away. He reveled in its fear. He approached slowly, each step bringing the alien to a new plateau of delicious terror. Suddenly, a bolt of plasma came flying in without warning and disintegrated the alien's head. John whirled to face the source to see six heavily armed and armored humans come charging into the square. XCOM had finally arrived. The pure hate that had been driving him disappeared, taking with it the corona of psionic energy and leaving only a bone-deep weariness in its wake. John blinked and the troopers were replaced by the blue-purple of the Mindoir skies, tinged black by smoke. He distantly felt the jolt of impact on his back and everything went black.

* * *

"What the hell happened Commodore?" Hackett winced internally. The Commander of XCOM was furious. That was good. So was he.

"They caught us off-guard sir," Hackett felt his lips twist into something between a scowl and a snarl. "The hyperwave hasn't gone up yet so they were using radar. The crazy bastards came in at FTL all the way into orbit and hit the defense garrison from there. Most of the local defense forces were either killed or trapped in their barracks for the duration and the assets in orbit were taken out before they could recover." The Commander's hands tightened. "The attackers, Batarian pirates from the early reports, had free reign on the colony until the _O'Connell _arrived half an hour later. We were able to chase them off without much trouble, but the current estimates are at 4100 dead and 2800 missing, presumed taken."

The Commander went dangerously still. "Taken?" His voice dripped with tightly leashed anger.

"Yes sir," Hackett could feel the indignant rage the thought conjured roiling in his gut. "The ships we captured all had cages." He swallowed heavily. "We believe the attackers were slavers."

The Commander twitched and visibly forced himself to calm down. "Do we know anything about where they took our people? Or who, if anyone, was behind it?"

"Not yet." The words tasted like bile in Hackett's mouth. "But we do have a few of their ships and some captives. We will know soon."

"Good work, Commodore. The Coalition is already on the verge of riot over this. Find them, whatever it takes." The Commander eyed Hackett briefly. "And when you do, send a message to any of their friends that this will not be tolerated."

"Yes sir." Hackett saluted sharply and the line went dead.

* * *

"Ugly thing, ain't it?" One of the guards beside Hackett asked, as the group gazed through the one-way glass at a batarian chained to a chair in the adjacent room. "It won't give us a name, or anything else for that matter. It just sits there and stares"

Hackett grunted. "He'll talk." He moved to the door and waved Dr. Marcaeus to follow. "One way or the other." The men moved into the interrogation room and sat down across from the batarian. "I am Commodore Steven Hackett of the XCS _O'Connell_," he introduced himself and his companion. "This is Dr. Marcaeus." The batarian didn't react. "I know you can understand me, so quit the act." Still no reaction. Hackett glared at him for a few seconds. "You can either talk to me or the good doctor here." Marcaeus leaned forward eagerly, a hint of manic curiousity in his eye. "Where did you take my people?"

The alien continued to sit there and stare. "If that's what you want." Hackett rose to his feet and turned to the door. "Doctor, I expect your report by morning." Marcaeus made a noise of assent and started barking orders to prepare his tools and began explaining his process to the captive alien. Hackett made it less than three steps before the alien broke his silence.

"Wait!" Hackett turned back. The alien was giving the doctor a thoroughly perturbed look. "Ask your questions, human." Hackett grinned humorlessly as he retook his seat. That was easy enough.

* * *

"_Greetings, people of the galaxy," the video began, showing nothing more than the upper half of a male human bathed in shadow, obscuring his features. "I am the Supreme Commander of the Human Coalition's Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM. Today, a grave crime has been committed against my people. A group of slavers attacked the human colony of Mindoir in the Attican Traverse, killing over 4,000 and capturing 3,000 more. This will not be allowed to stand." The human paused and his hands tightened into fists. "I have only one thing to say to those responsible: We are coming. We do not care where you are hiding. We do not care who is protecting you. We are coming for you, and _when _we find you, you will pray for the mercy of a slow death."_

"Hah!" the Batarian jeered as the news station replayed the clip. He turned away from the display to the dirty forms huddled in cages throughout the room. "He thinks he can find us," he commented idly, derision clear in his tone. "And beyond that, he thinks he can touch us." He laughed suddenly, a high-pitched cackle distinctly at odds with his normal voice. He squatted outside one of the cages, idly caressing the blade of a knife pulled from his boot. "Ah, my friends, he's crazier'n I am. You belong to Vaas now." He surged towards the captives, a manic glint in all four eyes. "Now and forever."


	6. Retribution

**Chapter 5: Retribution**

"What do we know, Commodore?" The Commander of XCOM was as implacable as ever, jumping straight to the point before the connection had even settled. Thankfully, two days was more than enough time for XCOM teams to compile information.

"A lot, Commander." It took a phenomenal effort for Hackett to keep his voice calm in light of the information he had received. "Most of it unpleasant." Hackett breathed out noisily. "The attackers were based out of the habitable moon Torfan in batarian space. From what the captives are saying, it appears they are planning to sell their _product_," Hackett spit out the word venomously. "in an auction four days from now, in a city on the Batarian Hegemony-controlled planet Adek."

"Do we know where they are being held until then?" the Commander asked, deceptively mildly. Hackett shook his head.

"No. Our captives don't know either. Their leader, a batarian named Vaas, doesn't trust anyone." Hackett scowled furiously. "He gave them a rendezvous point and said he would give them the next destination there. We tried to catch them, but by the time we arrived, they were long gone."

The Commander glowered at nothing. "Damn. We need to get our people back," he said matter-of-factly. "What is your plan?"

"I am planning to hit them during the auction," Hackett replied. "With the maps of the Relay network provided by the Citadel, the _O'Connell_ can move here." Hackett tapped a brief sequence and showed the Commander a segment of the galaxy, Adek's system highlighted in red and a nearby system in blue. "From there, a small taskforce can use element zero FTL to attack their Torfan base here," another nearby system was highlighted in red. "And search for intel on their backers. Meanwhile, the _O'Connell _can attack Adek. The captives will be concentrated in only one or a few large holding areas somewhere in the city. A few ground teams could get in and get them out."

The Commander nodded approvingly. "Make it happen." The Commander hesitated before his expression hardened as if coming to a decision. "And once our people are out, I am authorizing the use of Chryssalid strikes."

"Sir?" Hackett could barely believe his ears. The cloned, sterile Chryssalids had never been used, and he had no desire to be the one to change that. The damn bugs were the most dangerous living thing humanity had ever encountered.

"We need to make a statement," the Commander growled out. "The bastards who attacked us and those trying to profit from their work will demonstrate to the galaxy the consequences of their actions. We must ensure this never happens again."

Hackett swallowed but saluted. "Yes sir." It wasn't pleasant, but the Commander was right. The aftermath of a Chryssalid strike would serve as an effective deterrent against future attacks, saving countless human lives. He took a moment to compose himself then said, "It will be done."

"Good. Anything more?"

"Yes." Hackett's visage twisted in frustrated anger. "Mindoir was attacked at the suggestion of a pair of humans."

"WHAT?!" The Commander roared, shock overriding his normal control. He quickly restored at least the facade of calm. Anger still simmered in his voice however. "Explain."

"Vaas met with a pair of humans a month ago," Hackett said, anger at the betrayal clear in his voice. "When the traitorous bastards left, he began planning the raid. Our captives don't know anything more."

The Commander audibly growled. "New objective Commodore. Find Vaas. Take him alive. I want his collaborators."

"Yes sir," Hackett said with obvious relish. "We will find them. If you will excuse me, I have to start planning the operation." He saluted the Commander, who returned it before the connection died. Hackett left his quarters and swiftly made for the bridge. Ten minutes later, the _O'Connell_ began its journey through the Relay network.

* * *

Hackett regarded the soldiers as they entered the briefing room. These men and women were going to undertake the first true human infantry operation in over 150 years. He was confident they were up to the task, but he couldn't help the anxiety. The soldiers settled into their seats, ignorant of his thoughts. It was time to start the briefing. The holographic display to his side burst to life at his command, showing a scale image of the target city.

"Greetings. This is the plan for Operation Hammerfall." Hackett's gaze moved through the room, occasionally locking eyes with one of the soldiers. "The slavers who attacked Mindoir are planning to sell their captives at auction in this city within the next 3 hours. Your primary objective is to object to that." A brief murmur of approval spread through the room at that. "We have been observing the city and we have determined that significant numbers of captives can only be held in these locations." The display suddenly lit up, four blue dots, each bearing a different number, overlaying select points in the city. "1, 8 and 12, you're on Alpha. 2, 10, 22 on Beta. 4, 5, 6 on Charlie. And 7, 9, 15 on Delta. You will be delivered via _Starranger _to your insertion points here," Green dots appeared near the blue markers. The soldiers leaned forward to study it. "AA emplacements make it dangerous to get any closer. Make your way from there to your objectives. Once there, call in for a wormhole and get the civies through it. You are weapons free for this operation."

One of the soldiers raised a hand at this point. At Hackett's acknowledgement he asked, "What kind of opposition should we expect?"

"Intel from the attack and captives says to expect batarians and element zero slug throwers in large numbers, with a handful of laser rifles they stole from Mindoir." Hackett scowled. "Beyond that, we're not sure. Odds are good for at least a few Krogan. Opposition will be numerous, but they are pirates, not soldiers. They will break under pressure." The soldiers acknowledged the information without expression. Hackett paused a moment for additional questions then continued the briefing. "All of you also have two secondary objectives."

The holographic display shifted from the map to a portrait of a batarian, a scar from below its upper right eye and running up over its skull. "First, this is Vaas. He is the leader of the raiders and he has critical intel about the masterminds behind the attack. He is to be taken alive if at all possible. We are not sure where he will be, but if sighted, capture him." A ripple of acknowledgement passed through the room. "Second, we have reason to believe there may be a small number of humans assisting the pirates." Angry murmurs spread. "Any that are found are to be captured alive for trial if possible. They will be made an example of." Based on their expressions, the soldiers approved.

"That's everything. Any questions?" The room was silent for a long moment after Hackett's question. He nodded. "Dismissed. Get to your _Starrangers_." The soldiers stood and filed out. He felt confident in this operation. The captives would be returned to their families soon.

* * *

Hackett entered the bridge minutes later and made his way directly to his post beside the holographic display. As he approached, the display activated, showing Adek's immediate surroundings. Ten vessels of various sizes lazily orbited the planet. The biggest, a cruiser matching the readings from the one chased from Mindoir, hung in a geosynchronous orbit above the auction city. Satisfaction filled the commodore at the sight. That was a good sign. Vaas was likely on-planet organizing the auction.

Hackett watched the ships move around the planet, trying to determine the best place to start the attack. The first part was simple at least. A sharp gesture through the hologram highlighted the cruiser. "Capture teams on this one. Prep boarding teams, priority on captive rescue. Vaas and human collaborators are secondary objectives."

"Aye sir," a bridge technician acknowledged and started relaying the orders. Hackett studied the display for long period and a pattern started to emerge. He watched the ships move further along their orbits to confirm it and settled on a plan.

"Sword-1 through 6 should be deployed here," he highlighted a collection of points around the intersection of three hostile vessels' orbital paths. A series of quick taps on the hologram highlighted a pair of other ships moving in tandem. "7 through 10 on these two, drop them on either side of their path. The rest get two squadrons per. And prep Smoke-6 and 7 for ECM. Have them all stand ready for my signal." A tense minute passed as Hackett carefully monitored the alien vessels, trying to find any flaws in his plan or holes to exploit.

Eventually, the techs reported the assault squadrons were ready. The first trio of ships inched along their orbits, drawing ever closer to each other. Finally, they started to overlap. "Go," Hackett barked. "Take these bastards out."

Portals sprung to life, disgorging wave after wave of drones and _Tsunami_ fighters on the unsuspecting aliens. The _Typhoons _emerged on the outer edge of the engagement area, inundating the area with jamming signals. The alien ships descended into chaos. The trio of converging vessels were destroyed in moments, becoming little more than clumps of molten slag hurtling through space. Hackett allowed the satisfaction the sight generated to spread to his face as the now-free fighters moved to assist their compatriots.

The solo vessels were in equally dire straits, or very soon would be, but the tandem pair were proving more resilient. They covered each other well, and their shields were clearly superior to the other vessels'. Probably batarian military then. Hackett scowled. That could complicate things. There wasn't much he could do about it at this point though. At least Smoke was keeping them from calling for help.

Sword-7 through 10 were soon bolstered by the fighter squadrons which had dispatched their targets and began to make clear headway against the military vessels. The reinforcements proved too much for the batarian ships, and they were quickly destroyed. The fighters left behind the half-melted hulls in search of new prey. Ten minutes after it began, all the targets save the cruiser had been destroyed.

The capture squadrons danced erratically around their target, dodging wildly around, past and through the cruiser's point defenses. EMP cannons flared whenever a fighter got close enough, only to be driven back in a flurry of GARDIAN laser fire. Each successive volley was slightly slower than the last however, giving the fighters more and more of a chance to fry its systems.

Finally, ten minutes later, the cruiser's point defenses went silent, the shattered remains of three human fighters and twice as many drones littering the space around it. Hackett nodded to himself. Orbital superiority had been established. "Send in the groundpounders," he ordered. "Time to bring our people home."

* * *

The intangible otherness of wormhole travel was replaced by bonejarring turbulence as the _Starranger _moved into Adek's atmosphere. Air roared through the portal into space, jostling the transport craft wildly in its rush to escape. Despite himself, Lieutenant-Commander David Anderson felt himself relax slightly as the portal closed and the turbulence abruptly stopped. He turned to his squad and spoke, "Alright people, we're on point. Keep your heads down and eyes open. Remember, this is a rescue op. Check your fire until you're sure it's hostile."

The squad acknowledged the order as the _Starranger_ settled on the ground. The door slid open with a soft whoosh and the team rushed out into a conspicuously empty landing zone. The team's transport took to the sky and two other _Starrangers_ swiftly filled the space. Strike-8 and 12 were disgorged from the craft in a matter of moments and the transports lifted off to provide air support. Anderson organized the troops into formation, placing Strike-1 at the front, the sniper team, 8, at the back and the heavies in 12 in the middle. Anderson took a moment to study the map displayed on the corner of his visor and the alien positions reported by drones and _Starrangers_. He highlighted the safest route and shared it with the other squad leaders.

"That's our path. Stay sharp." Clicks sounded to acknowledge the order and the troops advanced. They moved smoothly through the streets to the distant echoes of firefights. After a few minutes, a sharp noise in a nearby building brought the column to a halt. The soldiers threw themselves behind cover, weapons trained on the building. Anderson carefully crept to the door and his second, Sergeant Avery Johnson, joined him on the other side. Anderson readied his alloy cannon and Johnson hefted his heavy plasma cannon, primed and ready for action.

Anderson started a countdown with his fingers and at zero rolled out in front of the door and kicked it in with a shout. Steel twisted from the blow and the door flew open with a squeal. Anderson and Johnson rushed inside to the sound of incoherent screaming. The pair drew up short as they realized it came from the cowering batarian woman before them. She had pressed herself against the wall across the room and was visibly straining to go farther. Her gaze never left their guns. Animal panic had clearly overtaken her.

Anderson lowered his shotgun and took a step back, waving for Johnson to do the same. "Stand down," Anderson called to the troops behind him. "It's a civvie." The alien woman stopped screaming and calmed slightly when they retreated but refused to move away from the wall. "Ma'am," Anderson said, the odd echo of his translation suite filling his ears. Johnson backed out of the room behind him and the woman's gaze finally moved from his weapon to his helmet. He tried to make himself as non-threatening as he could. "I suggest you get out of town. You don't want to be here twenty minutes from now." She nodded fearfully. Anderson heaved a sigh and turned to leave. "Good luck."

The commander rejoined his squad and the humans resumed their march. A minute later, Strike-8 reported the woman running like a bat out of hell away from them. Anderson felt a small wave of relief at that. That was one less civilian to worry about. The teams advanced towards their objective, soon coming to a large five-way intersection. A road bisected the building across and to the left of the intersection, leaving a tall triangular building on that side of the road giving a clear overview of the square and the surrounding rooftops. Anderson paused briefly as it came into sight. "I don't like the look of that," he said quietly. "Eight, get to the roofs on either side here and scout it out."

Grappling hooks shot out with a hissing roar and pulled the sniper team up onto the rooftops bracketing the street the humans were moving along. A moment later, a sensor bundle landed in the middle of the square. Lieutenant-Commander Lin called down. "Looks clear from here."

Anderson sent back an acknowledging click and moved Strike-1 and 12 forward. Strike-1 took point towards the intersection, carefully moving between cars, streetlights and adverts. Soon enough though, they reached the crossroad and their cover ran out. Anderson advanced slowly, his team trailing behind him. He had almost reached the far side of the street when one of Strike-8's snipers called out. "AMBUSH! 9 o'clock!"

Anderson whirled to the left, raising his left forearm in the same motion. A quiet crackle filled the air as his shield emitters flared to life, imposing a semi-transparent blue wall between him and the metric ton of angry krogan bearing down on him. Anderson distantly noted plasma lancing out from the roofs Strike-8 sheltered on, driving the batarians who had appeared further down the street on his original direction into cover. His shield failed in a cascade of sparks as the krogan hit it, but it halted the lizard in its tracks. He unloaded on the alien, tearing an enormous, messy hole in its torso. It fell back with a shriek of pain and went still. In the background, heavy plasma from Strike-12 spat out towards the batarians behind the krogan blitz, melting major holes in cars and walls and scattering the batarians before they could tear into his men.

The commander turned around to assist his squad in fighting the remaining three krogan who had charged into their midst. Shotgun blasts roared from the overgrown lizards, filling the air with massive flechettes. Hernandez collapsed as one of the krogan's blasts took off his arm and most of his chest. Green death lanced from Johnson's heavy plasma, flash-frying the responsible krogan's skull. Anderson blasted a third lizard in the hump as Xing's alloy cannon hit it in the chest. Their target practically disintegrated. The last krogan gave a deep, guttural scream and lunged at Johnson. The alien carried the heavy to the ground and with a mighty twist shattered the man's neck. Another pair of alloy cannon blasts rang out and the krogan's upper body disintegrated.

"Across the street, get on them!" Anderson yelled, leading Strike-1 in a renewed charge at the batarians Strike-8 was keeping pinned. Anderson charged ahead and threw himself over one of the vehicles on the street. HIs momentum carried him into the batarian sheltering behind it and he rode the alien to the ground. The light armor worn by the alien shattered under Anderson's weight followed by the alien's ribs as they hit the pavement. The rest of Strike-1 followed his charge in an explosion of noise and violence. Seconds later, the batarians in the street had all fallen silent.

Anderson moved back towards the intersection, aiming to shelter behind the corner of the triangular building. A massive surge of plasma from Strike-12 across the street disrupted his plans neatly however. The plasma impacted the roof of the building with a roar, and a humanoid shape was thrown clear. It landed directly in his path with a wet splat and burst of blue blood.

He jumped over the Turian corpse and threw himself against the wall. Bullets ricocheted off his armor and the wall in a shower of sparks. He flinched back and threw his shield arm up to cover himself, looking around wildly for the shooter. A bolt of green flashed through his peripheral vision, drawing his gaze to a balcony across the street where a batarian collapsed soundlessly and the incoming fire stopped.

Anderson breathed a sigh of relief and took a look around the corner. A trio of batarian corpses littered the street with four more actively exchanging fire with Strike-12. A grenade flew through the air and landed amidst the batarians. The aliens scattered. Anderson signaled Strike-1 to move, and the squad of 4 advanced. Anderson led the charge from cover to cover, maneuvering around the aliens.

The batarians finally noticed Strike-1's approach as they regrouped from the grenade, but they had nowhere to go. Anderson grinned to himself and threw his own grenade. The aliens panicked and bolted from their cover. Between the two Strike teams the aliens were cut down swiftly. Anderson scanned his surroundings for more hostiles until a bolt of plasma lanced out directly overhead. He ducked back into cover until Lin called out. "Clear."

Anderson relaxed slightly. "Good job folks. Status?" He waved his support troopers to tend to Hernandez and Johnson.

"All green here sir," Lieutenant-Commander Swan, leader of Strike-12, reported briefly.

"One wounded, Nilsdottir. She can't continue." Lin said. The medics tending his troopers then stood and shook their heads.

"Damn." Anderson scowled. He keyed his radio. "Eagle-6, we've got casualties." He read off their coordinates.

"Roger that, medivac inbound," the pilot responded quickly. "ETA two minutes."

"Keep an eye out for new x-rays Eight, and get Nilsdottir down here. Everyone else, check the corpses, see if they have anything useful." He suited actions to words and started poking through the alien corpses. Nothing stood out as especially useful by the time the _Starranger_ landed. The troopers quickly loaded up their dead and wounded along with their equipment. A minute later, the transport was back in the air and the squads were once again moving towards their objective.

* * *

"You're a defiant one, Jason." Vaas said as he regarded his chair-bound captive. The human glared at him. A feral, teeth-bearing grin split his features. No matter how hard the pathetic creature tried, it couldn't hide the fear lurking behind its eyes. It was a delicious sight. He dangled his knife before the human's eyes and shook his head, making faint tuting sounds. "You humans," he spit the name like a curse. "Are good at that. But here," he slid the flat of his knife along the very still monkey's cheek. "This is my world. I rule this fucking kingdom. And defiance to the king must be..." He leaned in and nearly purred the last word into its ear. "Punished."

The human's glare intensified at that. It swung its head at his face, sending Vaas stumbling back. He started laughing uncontrollably. "Good Jason! Good! Keep that fire burning." He licked the tip of his blade. "It makes it all the sweeter to snuff it out." The monkey's glare hardened into an intoxicating mix of fear, anger and defiance. A fierce rush of almost sexual anticipation rose within Vaas. The strong ones were always the most fun to break.

"Vaas! We've got a problem." A voice broke through the haze before he could truly get started. Hot rage replaced pleasure. He whirled towards the door to the main holding pens, a thin veneer of calm pouring over his features.

"More than one, it seems" He said, his tone almost friendly. The batarian messenger froze just inside the door, clearly aware he had crossed some line. Vaas stepped up to the now-cowering messenger and threw an arm over his shoulder. "But before I tell you my problem, why don't you tell me yours?"

"Th- The humans are here," the messenger gasped out. "They're coming this way now! We need to go!"

Vaas tuted again. "Forvan. Forry. For," he shook his head. "I'm in the middle of something here."

"They've already destroyed the _Ghrak _and killed the Blood Pack guards we hired! They'll kill us all!" Forvan was on the verge of panic. Vaas began to reply, but was cut off by loud, wild laughter and muffled jeers from his captive. He sighed loudly.

"You see what you did Forry?" He faced the other batarian at the captive. "You see what you _fucking _did?!" He asked again with a yell. His grip tightened on his subordinate and he spoke in a dangerously calm voice. "You broke the mood. You should know by now not to break the fucking mood." The human's laughter trailed off, as if confused by his reaction.

Forvan started blubbering. "I- I'm sorry boss. You're right! Of course you're right, you're always right." His eyes never moved from Vaas' blade, which was waved idly by its owner's free hand. "I'll j- just let you get back to it." He tried to take a step back, but Vaas' grip tightened again. "Please don't kill me," he whispered fearfully.

"Forry!" Vaas said jovially. "Am I the kind of guy to kill you for that?" Several seconds passed before Forvan realized that he really was expecting an answer.

"Uh..." the messenger hesitated, obviously unsure of which answer would let him live. Vaas didn't let up however. "No?" He answered hopefully, more a question than a statement. Vaas barked a laugh and in a move too fast to follow plunged his knife into the messenger's forehead.

"Bzzt! Wrong answer! That's too bad, Forry. I always kinda liked you." He tugged the knife out of the corpse with a wet schlick and let the body fall. He turned back to his captive, delighting in the horror in its eyes. "Now, where were we?"

* * *

"Damnit," Anderson muttered to himself as he watched the video feed from the scout drone moving over the square ahead. A raised platform with functioning stockades dominated the area. He felt his blood boil at the sight. This must be the site of the auction, a conclusion only furthered by the cages holding Asari, Turians and even Batarians in one corner of the square. Armed batarians filled the space, clearly ready for the human attack. Even worse was the tank standing silent vigil beside the stage.

He turned to the soldiers behind him. "We've got heavy armor with infantry support in the next square." He shared the video feed with the team leaders. "One's with me through here." The commander pointed out a door in the building they crouched behind. "We'll come out at ground level. Eight, you're on the roof again." He waited for acknowledgement from Lin before continuing. "Wait til we're in place twelve, then I want that tank dead." A large segment of the square centered on the stage was highlighted on their displays. "Loose a barrage along here to scatter them. Eight, while they're distracted get mind controls on as many as you can and make more chaos. One, we're going to flank them at the same time. Questions?" None were to be had. "Good, move out."

Strike-8 shot to the roof accompanied by the hiss of grappling hooks while one rushed through the building. Anderson slid to a stop against a doorframe leading out to the square, the other three members of Strike-1 taking up positions around egress points along the walls beside him. "Strike-1 in position," he reported.

At almost the same moment, Lin called out, "Strike-8 ready."

A heartbeat passed before the unmistakable sound of a shoulder-mounted Titan Missile barrage echoed throughout the area. Contrails roared through the air for a brief instant and brilliant explosions filled the square. Batarian guards around the stage fell en masse under the explosive barrage. Heavy plasma cannons roared to life, spitting massive globes of green death at the batarian vehicle. Kinetic barriers flared and died in moments, unable to handle the simultaneous, concentrated fire of four heavy plasmas. The armor lasted naught but a scant handful of seconds longer, leaving the delicate innards and pilots to the mercy of superheated plasma. The surrounding guards descended into chaos.

Strike-1 seized the initiative and burst from the building at an angle, moving to take the slave pens out of the line of fire. The purple flare of psionics shot overhead, spearing a trio of surviving batarians on the stage. Out of his peripheral vision, Anderson distantly noticed the newly subverted aliens methodically gunning down the other nearby survivors before they could recover. The eleven batarians scattered around the edge of the slave pens, and out of range of the missiles, reacted to their suddenly-hostile compatriots with the alacrity and calm rationale of those who had never before seen psionic mind control: by descending even further into panic.

The mind controlled batarians charged at their companions with a shout, filling the air with deadly projectiles. The guards quickly tried to return fire, the roar of assault rifles punctuated by the telltale zap of laser rifles. Strike-1 slipped around the guards practically without notice, the guards thoroughly distracted with gunning down their compatriots. The mind controlled aliens fell quickly under the assault and Anderson's hud highlighted the laser-bearing aliens. "Lasers priority," he barked. "Fire at will."

Plasma shot through the air, tearing into the unprotected backs of the batarians, killing two instantly. Anderson and Xing surged forward under the covering fire of their supports, alloy cannons roaring at every opportunity. Strike-12 burst into the square at the same time, heavy plasmas melting cover and cooking flesh. In less than thirty seconds, ten of the eleven remaining guards were dead.

The last took one look at the smoking, melted corpses of his companions and the plasma weapons being brought to bear on him, threw down his rifle and began loudly pleading for mercy. Anderson carefully moved up to the alien. "Shut up." The batarian silenced himself instantly. He pointed at the slave pens mere feet away. "Keys."

"D-don't have them," the alien said weakly. The whine of a heavy plasma sent him hurrying to continue. "Captain did! He was in the tank!"

Anderson scowled and pulled an arc thrower off his belt. "That's unfortunate." The arc thrower was pointed at the alien, who scrambled back in a desperate attempt to get away. Electricity arced through the air and the batarian went limp. The commander turned to his subordinates. "Eight stay on overwatch. Everyone else, get these people out of those cages, melt the locks if you have to."

The locks were clearly not made to handle the heat of weaponized plasma, nor the raw strength of a Titan Armored human. It took less than a minute for the fifteen cages to be torn open and the slaves inside to gather at the entrance to the pen. The human troops filtered through the group, asking questions and attempting to reassure the nervous aliens. Anderson stepped out of the group and opened a comm channel to the _O'Connell_. "Command, this is Strike-1. We've found some alien slaves, requesting an evac portal for them."

"Strike-1, say again." Surprise and disbelief was clear in the answer.

"We found a couple hundred alien slaves," Anderson repeated calmly. "We need to get them on the _O'Connell_."

"Negative Commander. Your objective is to retrieve our people, not invite aliens onto one of our primary warships." The tech somehow managed to speak completely professionally, yet still convey an unspoken 'you idiot'. Anderson would have been impressed if the disregard for innocent lives hadn't angered him so much.

"Look," he put a substantial effort into keeping his voice calm. "These people were enslaved by the same fuckers that attacked Mindoir. I'm not leaving them in their custody. Open the damn portal."

"Negative. You are not authorized to bring aliens aboard." Great. A bureaucrat. Anderson's grip tightened on his shotgun.

"Then find someone who is and get them to do it," he growled. "We don't have time for this."

"I agree. Get back to your job, Commander." Anderson had to force down the sudden urge to break something.

"Not until you get these people out of here."

"Tha-" The aggravating tech cut off abruptly. Silence reigned over the line for a solid twenty seconds before he resumed speaking. "Very well." Frustration was evident in his voice. Someone with sense up there must have stepped in and overrode him, Anderson concluded. "Portal incoming now."

Anderson watched calmly as reality folded in on itself a few feet before him. The huddled former slaves recoiled from the rippling doorway. He let his shotgun hang from its strap and raised his hands. "Relax. It won't hurt you." The aliens shifted uncertain gazes from the portal to him. He rolled his eyes inside his helmet. Aliens never trusted psionics. He stepped through the portal and back onto Adek. "We're here to get you out of here. We'll get you back to wherever you came from."

Uncertain murmurs broke out among the freed slaves until a male Turian stepped forward. He thumped a fist against his chest and bowed his head. "You have my thanks human," he said and strode briskly into the portal. Anderson was no expert on alien expressions, but he was pretty sure 'nauseous' fit the Turian's to a tee. The alien shook itself hard and looked up at the group of former slaves. "It's safe. Not pleasant, but safe," he called back through the portal. The aliens began to move, walking through the portal in a constant stream.

Anderson walked over to the unconscious batarian, greatly amused to note the former slaves making a point of stepping _on _him. He stood by and let them vent, though he did reluctantly stop the three attempted murders. This one was going to be tried and lawfully punished, not murdered after surrendering. It was the right thing to do. No matter how much he didn't like it.

Finally, the last of the aliens moved past the thoroughly bruised batarian. Anderson slung him over one shoulder and carried him through the portal into the small artificial park at the heart of the _O'Connell_. He handed the body over to one of the human troopers brought up to keep the peace among the rescued captives. "This one's one of the slavers," he told the man he handed the alien to. "Throw him in the brig, let the courts handle him." The trooper saluted and carried the unconscious batarian out of sight. One of the other soldiers began addressing the gathered aliens, mostly that they weren't to leave the park and where to request final destinations from what he overheard.

The commander ignored it, they'd all get home soon enough. He stepped back through the portal and it smoothly closed behind him. He keyed his comm to his men. "Everyone ready?" A chorus of affirmations answered him. He waved the troops forward as Strike-8 descended from their perch. "We are Oscar-Mike."

* * *

Half-formed expectations of barbed wire fences and heads on pikes were shattered as the Strike teams approached their objective, a surprisingly bland warehouse. Anderson would have passed it without a second thought on a human world. "There's the place," he said quietly. "Not quite what I was expecting."

"It never is," Lin agreed.

Anderson studied the building for a moment and a plan of action formed in his mind. "Eight, you're coming in from the roof. If there's no door, make one." Lin clicked an affirmative. Grappling hooks shot out and Strike-8 reached the rooftop in seconds. "Twelve's watching the big door. Nothing gets out without my okay."

"You got it boss," Swan said and started moving his squad into position.

"One with me, we're going in the side door." The quartet crossed the distance to the warehouse without fanfare. They assembled around the doorway before he spoke again. "Check your fire, let's get the civvies out safely." A round of clicks came over the comm. He smiled grimly, the familiar tension of impending combat settling on his shoulders. "Three... two... one... GO!"

He whirled around and kicked the door in, the sound echoing throughout the cavernous room, muffled only by the large cages, both barred and solid steel walls, lining the edge. Small pieces of the roof fell to the ground as Strike-8 entered through it. The distinctive whine of Archangel jets filled the space with a cacophonous racket as the sniper team halted their descent and hovered above it all. Shouts of surprise and fear came from the cages as the humans inside cowered back.

Anderson heaved a sigh of relief as he realized that, outside of the cages, the room was empty save for a bloody young man slumped in, and tightly bound to, a chair in the middle of the room. He waved the rest of Strike-1 to search the room as he made his way to the chair. "You alright there, son?" he asked and set one hand on the least bloody of the captive's shoulders.

The man flinched and began flailing wildly, screaming unintelligibly through his gag. Anderson caught sight of a dull silver collar snugly wrapped around the young man's throat as his manic movements tipped the chair over backwards. Anderson moved to catch him, but was brought up short by the man's foot. The man kicked him backwards and at the same instant, the collar exploded, throwing twisted shrapnel and bloody viscera through the air. Taken completely by surprise, Anderson lost his balance and fell on his ass with an oath.

The human forces whirled to the source of the noise, searching for a target and finding only a headless corpse. A high-pitched cackle filled the room from every direction at once. "Jason! Why'd you have to go and ruin my surprise?!" a voice called in a disconcerting mix of joviality and anger. Anderson shot to his feet. This must be Vaas. The anger left the voice completely, leaving only a bizarre friendliness. "Oh well, I've still got some more." Anderson's heart sank into his feet and the entire human complement tensed. "I made this one special for you guys!" The voice cut out and the solid cages burst open with a bang. Humans came pouring out in a living tide.

Each one of them wore a collar just like the unfortunate sap on the chair, but there the similarities ended. Madness burned bright in their eyes and they screamed incoherently as they charged at the soldiers. Anderson felt a seething rage settle in his gut. Vaas must have done something to these people to whip them into such a frenzy. He had only a heartbeat to contemplate it before they were on him however, kicking and punching wildly at his armor. The crazed berserkers were not a real threat to a soldier in Titan Armor, but sheer weight of numbers could drag him to the ground easily. He began pushing back, careful to modulate the strength endowed by his armor to send them to the ground without permanent damage.

Then they began exploding. Random collars burst throughout the pack, filling the air with deadly shrapnel. The unarmored berserkers took the worst of it. The ones closest to the explosions died almost instantly but those further out ignored their wounds. They leapt, ran and even crawled at the soldiers without regard for their injuries or continued safety. The civilians started screaming in their cages, forcing themselves as far from the explosions as possible. "Fall back!" Anderson shouted, struggling to be heard over the chaos. "Don't let them near you!"

The next instant panels on two of the walls fell open and Vaas' voice rang out again. "Surprise!" Plasma rained from the new windows, indiscriminately gunning down berserk civilians and XCOM soldiers alike. Xing was cut down in an instant, caught by half a dozen plasma bolts at the same time.

"Twelve, blow that fucking door open!" Anderson shouted into his mic as Strike-1 tried to find cover behind the solid cages, fighting off the still-randomly-exploding berserkers all the way. Eight weaved through the air on their jetpacks, trading fire with the murder-holes in the walls. An instant later, the main doorway exploded violently, the shrapnel tearing into and through the last of the berserkers and finally brought them to a stop.

A bright green ball, covered in arcing electricity, flew through the enormous opening, ducking and weaving around and through the cages. It swerved abruptly and moved straight through one of the murder-holes. The blaster bomb exploded, taking half the wall with it.

The slavers' plasma fire stopped abruptly in surprise and Anderson seized the initiative, quickly tossing a grenade through the nearest remaining opening. He could distantly hear a muffled alien oath trail off into an explosion and thick yellow mist was thrown into the warehouse proper. Plasma from Strike-8 and Anderson's supports tore through the walls, quickly disintegrating the thin metal and tearing into the aliens behind it.

Vaas spoke up again from his surviving speakers. "You humans are no fun," he said sulkily, clearly upset his plan was falling apart. "Oh well. Let's try the next one!"

A loud roar echoed from outside and Swan called out, "Inbound gunship, 2 o'clock high!"

A hooked, angular shape, vaguely reminiscent of an ancient human attack helicopter, settled into place outside the opening torn through the wall by the blaster launcher shot. The gun mounted on its noise spun to life, spitting bullets into the flying soldiers. A mangled human body fell to the ground a second later.

The gunship didn't miss a beat, rotating its cannon to chase the erratically darting forms of the rest of Strike-8. Without warning, a blaster bomb slammed into the rear of the craft with an explosive roar and its gun went silent. The gunship was thrown through the hole and into the warehouse, where it hit the ground on its side, plowing through the still-intact chair and sliding to a stop inches from a cage. The occupants of the cage winced from the shower of debris thrown into them.

The cockpit popped open with a hydraulic hiss and a batarian dripping yellow blood fell out with a groan. Anderson charged at the pilot but drew up short as he recognized the scar running along its head. He grinned ferally. "Hello Vaas," he almost purred. The alien groaned and rolled onto his back. "We've got some questions for you." Vaas just moaned weakly. Anderson's fist shot out and hit the slaver's head hard. All four of Vaas' eyes rolled back and he went limp.

Anderson couldn't help the breath of relief that rushed out of him. "Man, that was satisfying." He bound the alien quickly with a length of wire and turned back to his men. "We've got Vaas. Get these cages open." The Strike teams moved through the cages, repeating their actions from the auction site to tear open the cages. He watched for a moment then called in their success. "Command, this is Strike-1. Mission complete. We've got our people, and Vaas, ready for transit." Coordinates were sent to the _O'Connell_.

"Roger Strike-1, wormhole inbound." Psionics flared and quickly stabilized into a wormhole. The humans were loosed from their cages in short order. Medics came in from the _O'Connell _and quickly collected the civilians injured during the firefight, disappearing back through the wormhole and to the carrier's medbay. The unharmed civilians were organized by a team of REMFs and moved through the portal in a constant stream, profusely thanking their liberators. The soldiers acknowledged the praise before turning to assist in the grim task of policing the dead. They gathered the bodies and the weapons, including the slavers' plasma rifles, and moved them through the portal alongside the stream of former slaves.

Soon enough, the warehouse was empty save for Anderson and Vaas. The human roughly threw the alien over his shoulder and moved through, allowing the portal to close behind him. A squad awaited them on the far side. The squad quickly collected Vaas from him and dragged the slaver out of sight. Anderson finally allowed himself to fully relax. Mission accomplished.

* * *

The command center for Adek's military forces was a scene of barely-controlled chaos. Fifteen well trained and highly capable officers ran around like headless pyjaks in a seemingly futile effort to repel the human invaders. Vaas had reached too far this time. The Hegemony couldn't ignore him calling down this kind of response. If he survived the attack, there would be hell to pay.

"Sir," a relieved voice intruded into Captain Dharn Gor'vak's thoughts. "The humans are leaving the city!" Relief visibly spread through the room at the pronouncement. More than one of his subordinates were on the verge of celebration.

Gor'vak scowled. That was too easy. "What? Why?"

"I don't know, but their aircraft are disappearing through their portals. There's no sign of an exit within ten light seconds." Confusion was paramount after that. Why by all that was holy would the humans attack then vanish in half an hour?

"Sir!" Another tech called out, holding a comm headset to his ear. "The slave pens have been emptied!"

"They came for the slaves," Gor'vak deduced aloud, to the murmured agreement of his men. His hands balled into fists. The bastard humans had walked right in and stole Hegemony property without a second thought. A chill swept down his spine. He would have to explain to the Hegemony how he let a group of two-eyed freaks come in and take billions of credits worth of flesh from directly under his nose.

That would not end well.

Half-formed excuses, explanations and scapegoats flew through his mind, propelled by mild panic too quickly for any ideas to take form. He forcibly stopped himself and took a deep breath. He had to be clear headed for this. A plan began to form once his thoughts stilled. He could shift the blame to Varnegak. The stupid bastard died in orbit, so there was no one around to contest Gor'vak's account of his 'orders'. He mentally pat himself on the back. That could actually work.

Of course, once he started feeling positive was when the sensor monitor started shouting. "Sir! Contact in orbit! Two-hundred mete- three hun- four hund- five hundred meters and growing!"

"What?!" Gor'vak roared. "How the hell is it growing?!"

"It's coming through a human portal sir!"

A wordless scream tore out of his throat. "Is there no end to this?!" He scowled furiously, all four eyes pointed at the roof as if he could see into space if he glared hard enough. "Put it on screen." The captain's display lit up to show the object appearing over his world. From the front, it appeared as an enormous, square cross. The side view showed a thick point that extended outward in smooth curves, growing wider and wider as what was obviously a vessel of some kind moved further into orbit above Adek.

The entire crew stood spellbound by the equally majestic and terrifying sight. The craft just kept getting larger, blowing through everyone's expectations. Some time later, it could have been two minutes or two hours for all Gor'vak could tell, the portal closed. The vessel hung in space, its eye-shaped side dominating the image. The sensor tech choked on nothing. "It- It's nine by three by three kilometers," he managed to get out.

Panicked whispers raced through the command center and a cold certainty settled in Gor'vak's gut. On the display, dozens of brilliant pinpricks, miniscule compared to the enormous vessel, shot from the craft, arcing around it. Trajectories were calculated and showed every single one aimed directly at his city. He swallowed heavily. "Gentlemen, I will see you in hell."

* * *

The invaders had come from nowhere and obliterated everything in their path. Charr Angbad shivered in his hiding place deep within his apartment. Fresh memories of a group of these aliens utterly _destroying _an entire Blood Pack warband played continuously through his mind. There was no rhyme or reason to this attack. Adek was mostly swamp, there wasn't anything to take!

Distant explosions and gunfire rang out and Charr cowered deeper into his closet. He prayed desperately for it all to stop. The sound of fighting continued unabated, in his mind now carrying a mocking tint. Fear roiled through his body, building ever higher with every sound.

Suddenly, it all went silent. Charr tensed, hardly daring to hope it was over. A wind picked up with a roar, shaking the entire building. The wild vibrations poured through the walls and settled in his bones. When the wind vanished, as abruptly as it came, he could feel his body still shaking in time with it. Absolute silence reigned for several minutes.

Charr slowly crawled out of his closet and carefully moved to the glass door to the balcony of his apartment. Looking out into the intersection below, there was no sign of the invaders. Only the corpses of the Blood Pack they had left behind. The scenes of brutal violence flashed behind his eyes yet again and he nearly collapsed in renewed terror. The only thing that kept him standing was the doorframe he slumped against.

He remained there, staring blankly at the carnage below, for a long time. Nothing intruded on his whirling thoughts. Eventually, he could take no more and wrenched his gaze into the sky. He blinked. Dozens of bright dots littered the sky. "What the...?" he murmured, entranced by the patterns the lights made.

The lights grew closer rapidly and within a matter of minutes, he knew what they were. "Fuck!" he shouted and threw himself back. He tripped over the edge of his couch and tumbled to the floor. He didn't bother to stand back up and just scrambled as deep into the building as he could get. He had no desire to be anywhere near starship grade missiles.

He found his way back into his closet and kicked the door closed seconds later. A long, tense few seconds passed before he could hear them. A loud, boneshaking roar filled the air, getting louder and louder as his death got closer. The sound quickly grew unbearable. He closed his eyes and curled in on himself, sure he was about to die.

The building shook again as a series of impossibly loud impacts rang out. But there were no explosions. A long moment passed before Charr uncurled from his protective ball. He was alive! The missiles must have been duds. He never thought he'd be grateful for government lowest-bidder contracts. He shot out of the closet with a cheer.

He did a small victory dance, but almost fell when something occurred to him. Even if it was a dud, those are military missiles. They've got to have something worthwhile in them! Credit signs flared in his eyes and he grinned maniacally. Time to start salvaging.

Charr rushed to the roof with a pair of binoculars to hunt for the nearest impact point. He found one quickly, just over a hundred meters away. The missile had settled vertically, one end driven into the ground by several centimeters. He cursed to himself. Eight others were already moving into the crater around it. He moved his optics to keep looking, but the three other impact sites he could see from his building were equally, or more, populated. He sighed in resignation and decided to head to the closest one. A fraction of the parts was better than nothing.

He gave the route to the missile one last look to ensure he didn't lose it on the ground and froze when his optics panned over the missile site. The top of the missile had cracked into four panels that folded wide open. The people near it fell back quickly as a dense mist leaked out of it. Charr couldn't tear his gaze away as three large, purple _things _shot out of the opening.

The creatures were plated in purple chitin and stood around two meters tall on four spindly legs, each ending in wickedly sharp points. They had two thin arms ending in four-fingered hands bearing vicious looking claws. Their torsos hunched forward, leading into a protruding head bearing two bright yellow eyes and twenty centimeter long mandibles. Glowing yellow points formed a frill along the back of its neck and along its knees.

Everything was still for an eternal instant and Charr felt sick dread well in his chest. The missiles weren't missiles at all. They were delivery platforms.

The creatures threw themselves at the nearby batarians with a chittering screech Charr could make out from all the way at his position. Each one grabbed a victim and tore into them before they could react. Charr's horrified attention was firmly caught by one that had lifted a hapless batarian in its claws. Its victim struggled wildly but the creature shoved its sharp mandibles into its victim's throat. Yellow blood flew through the air as it yanked its head back and the batarian went limp. It dropped the body and threw its torso down over it. The creature's body undulated and Charr felt his gorge rise as _something _lanced from the thing and pierced the corpse's chest. The purple creature stood back up and charged after the fleeing batarians with a shrill screech, cutting them down like a scythe through chaff. Soon, all three creatures were out of Charr's sight, leaving nothing but corpses in their wake.

Charr couldn't tear his gaze away from the corpses scattered throughout the crater. Bile rose in his throat. Then the bodies started moving. The binoculars nearly fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers and he could do nothing but gape as the mutilated corpses climbed to their feet and shuffled out of sight. What the fuck were these things?!

Charr took an unsteady step back and his foot landed on a loose piece of debris. His feet flew out from under him and he collapsed to the roof with a cry. He lay there for a long moment then forced himself to sit up. He looked up just in time to catch sight of one of the creatures coming down out of the sky and landing right in front of him. Animal panic tore through his every conscious control and his body froze in terror. Small mewling sounds leaked from his throat. The thing lunged. Everything went black.


	7. Consequences

**Chapter 6: Consequences**

Several holographic screens floated before the Citadel Council. In one, a large insectile creature ran down a fleeing batarian family and bloodily ripped them apart. In another, batarian military forces fought a desperate battle to bring down a trio of the creatures and succeeded, only for the survivors to be slain as their dead rose out of the creature's ashes and descended on them in a murderous frenzy. A third showed a group of the creatures assaulting an armored position in massive leaps, shrugging off small arms fire like it was rain. One of them landed on the entrenched vehicle and promptly tore through its armor and forced its way inside. Blood flew out a moment later, painting the area yellow.

Each and every display showed another slaughter or desperate battle against the chitinous horrors or mutilated corpses. "Goddess," Councillor Tevos said in a rush, a purple tinge settling over her features. "I am going to be sick."

For the first time in a long while, Sparatus, official representative of the Turian Hierarchy to the Citadel Council, found himself in complete agreement with his asari colleague. The STG footage Councillor Arolith had supplied was truly gruesome. "What is this? Where did it come from? And when?"

"Adek, Batarian Hegemony Space," came the rapid-fire response from the Salarian Councillor. "Humans attacked yesterday. Left these behind."

"What?" Tevos asked softly. "Why?"

"After Mindoir, Coalition issued statement of intent." Arolith gestured at the screens. "This is the result."

Tevos opened her mouth to continue, but Sparatus couldn't stop himself from interjecting. "What the hell are they?" Tevos gave him a mild glare for interrupting, but settled to listen to their Salarian counterpart.

"Predatory insectoid," Arolith tapped a pattern into his omnitool. All but one of the screens winked out and the remaining one grew to dominate the space. The remaining screen showed the creature undulating over one of its victims as a spike of some sort stabbed the body. The creature scampered off and the unfortunate soul climbed back to their feet and stumbled away. "Apparently parasitic in nature. Beyond that, we may never know." Another wave of his omnitool played the clip Sparatus noted before of the creatures dying amidst a batarian force. Arolith paused playback at the moment of their death. "Disintegration on death. Most likely, humans fit them with incendiary deadman triggers."

Sparatus shivered as Arolith restarted the clip and the dead batarians climbed back to their feet. That was just wrong. The dead should stay that way. Spirits, just watching that was deeply disturbing. "Do we know how they do... that?" he waved weakly at the screen, where the zombies, for lack of a better term, had attacked their former comrades.

"Yes." Sparatus blinked. He was not expecting that, and judging by Tevos' expression, neither was she.

"How?"

"These creatures reproduce by implanting an egg into their victims." The clip of the creature undulating over a victim played again, freezing in the middle of the motion. Arolith gestured at a chitinous spike that extended from the creature into the body of its victim. "This spike plants the egg and injects a potent drug. The victim is driven into a frenzy and can no longer feel pain. They ignore their injuries, stand back up and start to kill anything they see."

Tevos suddenly looked very worried. "Egg?" she queried, dread in her tone. "How long until they hatch?"

Arolith twitched slightly and spoke. "Never." His colleagues looked at him askance. He blinked, bemused. "STG operatives on site have examined several of these zombies. None of the eggs contained an embryo."

Sparatus wasn't too proud to admit he felt a rush of relief at that. "You mean..."

"Yes. They're sterile."

"Thank the Goddess for small mercies." Tevos said gratefully. "Do we know why the Coalition attacked?"

"Does it matter?" Sparatus countered. "They unleashed that," he waved a talon at the screen. He suppressed another shiver. "What possible justification is there for that?"

Tevos frowned at him. "You know as well as I do that one of their colonies was attacked. It would not surprise me if Adek was somehow involved."

"Correct," Arolith interjected. "Slave auction was to take place one hour after attack. Featuring the first human slaves."

Sparatus felt his mandibles twitch. Almost despite himself, he felt the first hints of approval tinting his disgust for the raid. He could admire their intentions, even if the result disturbed him at a very basic level. "Fantastic," he sighed heavily "Yet again the Hegemony creates larger problems than it is worth."

"You know it is not that simple," Tevos argued gently. "However, in this case I fear you are correct. They will demand blood."

"Blood we cannot afford to shed," Arolith said simply.

Something in the salarian's tone told Sparatus there was something more to the simple statement. "What do you mean by that?"

Arolith answered with another wave of his omnitool, replacing the on-screen still with a picture of space. A vessel floated serenely above the world of Adek and Sparatus couldn't stop himself from boggling at the sight. Small dots of what were most likely human fighters, absolutely miniscule compared to the enormous eye-shaped craft, were scattered through space around it. Arolith voice broke through his surprise. "This vessel is nine by three by three kilometers." The image burst to life, the small dots converging on it in a swarm. "It carries the craft we have seen before now." Arolith scowled fiercely. "That is nearly all we know."

"By the spirits..." Sparatus murmured, unable to tear his eyes away from the massive vessel. "Nine kilometers..." A mass accelerator shot from that could instantly kill anything in the Hierarchy fleet. He forced himself to recover his composure. "How many do they have?"

"Current estimates based on known force deployments range from six to twenty. Each carries an unknown number of small craft and, from what we can see here, four dreadnoughts, six cruisers, and twelve frigates."

Dear spirits... Worst case, the Coalition outgunned the entire Citadel. And they were willing to feed most of a city to their hell beasts to avenge less than five thousand deaths. "We cannot let this continue," Sparatus said slowly. "Humanity is a threat to the entirety of Citadel Space. We must use this opportunity to at least learn the full extent of their military ability, if not curtail it."

"Agreed," Arolith said. "But we must be careful not to reach too far. We cannot afford a war on that scale, especially since they do not rely on the Relay network."

"They would not take kindly to perceived interference from us," Tevos warned. "I fear disclosure may be the best we can do."

"So be it," Sparatus said. "We need to start preparing before they decide to turn on us."

* * *

The portal slid smoothly open, giving Anderson an excellent view of what had to be the entire remaining populace of Mindoir, most of them holding welcome back signs in one form or another. A moment later, the cheers hit him almost like a physical force. The freed captives surged through the portal, eager to reunite with their families. A young man shot out of the pack and all but tackled a young woman with a joyful cry. The pair kissed fiercely, completely ignoring the similar scenes playing out all around them.

Anderson couldn't stop the silly grin that stretched across his lips at the sight. This was why he joined XCOM. Sometimes the job sucked, but then you get days like this that make all the pain and effort worthwhile. He basked in the feeling as the returned captives streamed past him through the portal, most offering profuse thanks to him and all the other soldiers gathered to see them off.

Several minutes later, the carrier had been emptied of civilian humans. Then it was time for the other side of the return. Masterfully crafted yet spartan coffins were carried out by teams of four, accorded every honor those carrying them could bestow. The assembled crowd hushed quickly, subdued by the presence of the dead. Over three hundred coffins were laid on the earth in six rows a few minutes later. Anderson and a few of the other soldiers stepped through the portal to pay their respects to the dead they were forced to slay.

A group of officers followed behind the soldiers, swiftly moving to the front of coffins. One of them stepped forward and addressed the now-subdued crowd. "People of Mindoir, it is to my deepest sorrow that not all of our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers could be saved. Many were slain by the scum who had taken them. If you have not found your family or friends yet, I fear they may be among this number. My associates and I," he waved a hand at the officers beside him. "Are here to assist you in this difficult time." The group split apart to stand in a widely spaced line. "If you think your family is one of the slain, please form a line in front of each of us and we will do everything we can to help you locate them."

A worried group formed before each of the officers, nervously providing names to look for. Some people left the line with a happy shout and relieved expression, but many more were led to one of the coffins. One of these unfortunate souls was led to the coffin directly in front of Anderson. The woman fell to her knees and threw herself, sobbing, over the casket. Anderson's heart wrenched. This part always hurt the most.

The officer who had escorted the woman laid a hand on her shoulder, whispering words of encouragement. She stiffened at his touch, hiccupped and said, "I want to see him."

The officer looked distinctly uncomfortable at the request and took a step back. "Ma'am, that... that is not a good idea. Your husband did... did not die cleanly." Guilt churned in Anderson's gut at the understatement. There wasn't much left intact in this particular coffin. He should know; he'd been the one responsible.

She whirled on the officer with a glare. "I don't care! He-" her sudden anger evaporated and her voice broke into sobs. "He's m-my hus-husband d-d-damnit."

The officer sighed and readied himself to deny her again. Anderson's guilt forced him to step in. "It's alright, Lieutenant. I'll handle this." The officer saluted, looking extremely relieved, and moved back to the lines. Anderson watched him go, mentally steeling himself for what was coming. He knelt beside the woman and she glanced at him through her tears. "Ma'am, I... I have no idea what you must be going through, but if there's anything I can do, please let me know."

"I-I want to see him," she said, composing herself as best she could. He grimaced internally, but could not find it in himself to deny her again.

"Are you sure? It won't be pleasant." She nodded, tears still sliding down her cheeks. He sighed explosively. "Alright." He stepped over to the head of the casket while the woman shifted back to give the lid room to swing. "Are you sure about this?" he asked again.

"Just do it already!" she snapped through her tears. Anger temporarily overcoming her sorrow.

He looked at her for a long moment. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry," he said and flipped open the lid. The woman just stared at the mangled, but clean, torso and hand that was all that was in the coffin. After a long moment she threw herself at it with a cry, hugging the body for all she was worth, as if she could heal the man if she squeezed hard enough.

Anderson stepped back to give her some privacy, his emotions whirling rapidly. His hands balled into fists at his side. The sacking of Adek was peanuts compared to this. He would gladly do it as many times as necessary to stop innocent people from dying to pad some alien dipshit's wallet.

He took one last look at the crying woman and swore to himself. Never again.

* * *

A loud crack echoed through the well-appointed, cavernous chamber. "What the hell were you doing, Gor'vak?!" the Chancellor of the Batarian Hegemony roared from his seat behind his massive desk, small pieces of shattered plastic falling from his grip. "You had one job Captain, and you failed miserably."

"Chancellor, I had no choice," Gor'vak protested, cowering slightly on the far side of the desk. "Commander Varnegak ord-"

"I don't care what that idiot ordered!" the Chancellor countered fiercely. He slammed his palms against the desk. "He was dead, you incompetent buffoon." His voice lowered into a dangerous hiss. "You allowed less than two hundred pathetic, two-eyed freaks to walk in and steal over five thousand slaves without contest! Even worse, you let those abominations run rampant for over a day!" Gor'vak forced himself to ignore the thick tendrils of fear caressing the edges of his mind. If he gave in, he would not survive this meeting.

"I did everything in my power to stop them," he said, his defense starting strong. Memories flashed behind his eyes, of chitinous horrors ripping apart heavy armor; of men cut down like chaff only to rise again; of being forced to kill his entire ground team. His voice dropped to a whisper, the true horrors he had borne witness to only hinted at in his tone. "It was not enough. No one could be ready for such creatures." All four of his eyes glazed over as he lost himself in the memories.

The Chancellor growled, only further angered by the captain's lack of attention. "Your incompetence has seen an entire city dead and over a trillion credits lost in freed slaves and damages!" Gor'vak started and visibly brought his mind back to the present. The Chancellor glared at him, all four eyes narrowed. "I do not tolerate failure. Guar-"

"Let us not be hasty, Chancellor," a voice called, the holographic form of the Batarian Ambassador to the Citadel, Jath'Amon, flickered to life beside the desk. "He could still be of substantial use."

The Chancellor turned a glare on the interruptor. "Explain."

"Captain Gor'vak here is one of the only living Batarians who has seen the human military in action. There is a wealth of knowledge to be mined from such a resource."

The Chancellor leaned back in his chair and gave off a thoughtful hum. "You're correct as always, Jath," he said a moment later. Gor'vak nearly collapsed in relief at that.

"Indeed old friend. The good captain here also has plenty of reason to seek vengeance against the humans for what they have done," the ambassador said leadingly. Gor'vak felt his relief slowly evaporating with every word from the ambassador. "If you were to, say, order him to take no action, it would not be unexpected for him to desert, gather the other survivors and strike out on his own against the humans, would it not?"

When the Chancellor voiced his agreement, Gor'vak couldn't stop himself from asking incredulously, "Are you insane?! That's suicide!"

The Chancellor scowled thunderously at his outburst. "You showed the _entire galaxy_ that the Hegemony will stand aside and allow an entire world to be _slaughtered_ without a fight," he hissed, glaring death at the captain. "You will redeem yourself, or I will have you strung up by your entrails."

Gor'vak quailed under the Chancellor's glare. A flash of memory, his second in command being torn apart only to rise again, shot through his mind. The thought overcame even his fear of the Chancellor. His eyes hardened and he returned the Chancellor's glare. "No."

"What?!" the supreme leader of the Batarian Hegemony roared in shock. Gor'vak smiled wryly. It had been many years since anyone had defied the Chancellor.

"You may kill me," Gor'vak said, strangely serene, despite what he knew was coming. "They will do far worse."

The Chancellor roared in anger, whipped a pistol out from underneath his desk and shot the captain in an instant. Gor'vak stumbled back, hands clamping over the wound in his stomach as pain robbed him of strength. He collapsed to the floor in a slowly spreading pool of blood. Black began to creep along the edges of his vision.

"This idiot will serve as an example," he heard the Chancellor say. "The humans will pay for this insult." Dark fingers encroached further into his sight. The ambassador said something unintelligible. "We are members of the Citadel and we were attacked. They can't ignore that. We will have vengeance." He heaved a bloody breath. At least he wouldn't be around to see the result. The room went black.

* * *

Commodore Hackett strode into his office without fanfare. He threw himself into the chair behind his desk and allowed himself to seethe at what he had learned. When he felt able to control himself, he opened contact with the Commander. The man's stocky form appeared in a hologram on the far side of his desk.

The Commander took one look at Hackett and frowned. "I take it we do not have good news then, Commodore?"

"No," he replied. "We don't." Hackett took a deep breath and forged ahead. "We attempted to interrogate Vaas about his collaborators. He proved... uncooperative."

"I see," the Commander said slowly. "That is unfortunate, but I can't say I sympathize with him."

"Not at all," Hackett agreed. "We introduced him to the chamber and retrieved a wealth of information." The Commander eyed him as he paused, the unspoken 'get on with it' being clearly communicated. "To begin, the plasma rifles he used against Strike-1. We learned that Vaas acquired them through his human collaborators. The investigation is ongoing, but the current leading theory is a 'misplaced' weapons shipment to one of the fringe world garrisons. We believe the traitors either bribed or subverted one of the logistical officers supplying them."

"I don't like my organization being compromised," the Commander said brusquely. "Vet everyone involved with the shipments."

"It's in progress as we speak."

"Good. What do we know about Vaas' collaborators?"

"This part, you won't like, Commander," Hackett said carefully. He tapped a sequence onto his desktop, sending Vaas' interrogation report to the Commander. "First, the collaborators chose Mindoir. Vaas had been contemplating a raid for some time, but he could not find a way around our defenses. The traitors gave him that information."

The Commander scowled thunderously. "Who were they?"

Hackett tapped a sequence into his desk and a holographic display came to life, holding an image with the telltale mild distortions of being torn from a living mind by the interrogation chamber. In the image, a man and a woman sat, frozen in mid-conversation, in rickety chairs in a surprisingly vibrant room. "This is the best image we could get of them," he said quietly, a tremor of anger running through his voice. "We have not yet identified the woman, but the man turned up a hit on facial recognition in under an hour."

"That was fast," the Commander said, his surprise obvious. "Who is he?"

"His name is Jonathan Montgomery, son of Captain William Montgomery of the XCS _Legetho_." Hackett's hands curled into fists on his desk. Military families should know better than to pull this shit.

The Commander hissed low in his throat. "This is not good Commodore."

"No, it's not," he agreed. "We're working to ID the woman with him, but there's no ETA on it at this time."

"Damn." The Commander's scowl deepened. "Bill is not going to be happy." The hologram sagged in place. "God I hate this shit," he muttered. He took a deep breath and straightened, looking Hackett straight in the eye. The raw determination in his gaze reminded the commodore why he was chosen to lead the defense of humanity. "So be it. We cannot countenance traitors. Take him into custody and find out everything he knows. Whatever it takes. He could lead us to the rest of them."

"Yes sir," Hackett saluted. "Vigilo Confido." The Commander returned the gesture and the hologram winked out.

* * *

"Esteemed members of the Citadel Council," Jath'Amon started smoothly from where he stood on the petitioning platform of the cavernous Council Chambers. "I come to you with distressing news. No more than 48 hours ago, the Batarian planet of Adek was laid to waste by the Human Coalition. The humans then unleashed ferocious beasts the likes of which this galaxy has never seen. Tens of thousands of my people are dead and bllions of credits in damages were dealt to the city of Granak." Jath'Amon made a small motion of supplication. "I humbly beseech this august Council for military aid against our attackers, before they target another world."

"Tch. Bit off more than you could chew, this time then?," Sparatus asked dismissively.

Jath'Amon adopted a look of abject confusion. "I'm sorry Councillor, but I don't understand."

"Of course you don-"

"Sparatus!" Councillor Tevos barked sharply. "Now is not the time."

The turian started then nodded to his asari colleague, quickly re-composing himself. "Of course, my apologies."

Tevos turned back to the batarian ambassador. "Forgive my colleague, Ambassador. Now, what, exactly, is the Batarian Hegemony requesting?"

"I should think that would be obvious," Jath'Amon said bluntly, carefully modulating his voice to convey the slightest hint of pleading in his tone. "We must strike first and ensure they can never attack again, before they can regroup and murder another colony! There's no telling where the humans will strike next!"

"Just look for the colonies with human captives," Sparatus said under his breath, barely audible by the time it reached the petition stage. Jath'Amon glanced at him warily. The turian councillor was the greatest obstacle to getting the Council involved; he had never hidden his disdain for the Hegemony.

"That was the act of pirates! The Hegemony had no knowledge of any human captives!" Jath'Amon said emphatically. "The humans fed an entire city of innocents to those... _things_ because a psychopath felt it necessary to sell his captives on a batarian world!"

"Then you shou-" Sparatus began, only for Councillor Arolith to talk over him.

"Regardless of culpability, human captives were on Adek and humans attacked," the salarian said with a note of finality. "There is no reason to believe there will be further violence."

The batarian ambassador set his features in as fearful an expression as he could manage. "There is no reason to believe there won't be!" he insisted. "Councillors, humans are a violent species by nature. My people are terrified they will be made to suffer and die for the actions of a depraved lunatic. The attack on Mindoir was a terrible tragedy, but my people had nothing to do with it! Do not let them die to feed the human thirst for blood."

Tevos' gaze softened fractionally. "That will not happen, Ambassador," she said firmly. "But we are responsible for far more lives than just the Hegemony. We will not start a war without at least attempting to hear what they have to say."

"But-" Jath'Amon began.

"This Council has spoken," Tevos said, her tone making it clear dissent would not be allowed. "If the humans show any sign of pressing the attack, we will bring the full might of this Council to bear against them. But we will _not_ enter a war without due cause."

Jath'Amon scowled internally. This meeting had been far less productive than he had hoped. Externally, he nodded graciously to the Council. "As always, your wisdom is boundless. Thank you for your time, Councillors."

* * *

"We have eyes on the target," the call came over the radio of XCIS Special Agent Samuel Rejev. "He is approaching the building from the south. Prepare to execute."

Rejev acknowledged the info and shifted slightly in his position atop a building across the street from the target's two-story home. The young man stepped into view after a brief wait, briskly strolling along the sidewalk. Two blocks from the building, he stopped abruptly as a tall, blonde woman stepped out of a building into the street in front of him. The target looked shocked and said something to the woman, but distance and poor angle made it impossible for Rejev to determine what. As best he could tell from the back of her head, the woman responded. Montgomery scowled at her and shook his head, then took a step around her and continued toward his home. She whirled around to follow and Rejev got his first good look at the face he had obsessively studied for several hours.

Excitement surged through him in a rush. "Boss, Cassiopeia is with him," he said excitedly, using the codename for the unknown woman who met with Vaas.

"You sure, Sam?" the leader of his squad asked, surprise obvious in his voice.

"Very. I'd recognize her anywhere," Rejev answered calmly. "She confronted him 200 meters from the house. Looked like she said something to him but he brushed her off and she's following him inside." True to his words, the pair reached the house and started to move inside.

"Interesting..." the boss' murmur came over the radio. "Plan's the same people. In and out, no mess, no fuss, and no casualties. Take them both, priority on Cassiopeia. Understood?" A chorus of acknowledgements came over the radio. "Good. Targets are in the building, confirm status and execute on my mark."

Rejev tensed in place and brought his grapple to bear on the target's home as a series of clicks sounded over the radio, each member of the five-man squad signifying readiness. The last click came through and the squad leader's voice came back. "Mark. Go go go!"

The grapple shot from Rejev's forearm and stuck firmly to the roof of the building with a soft thump. The rope pulled taut and he slapped the button on the belt of his lightly armored suit of Titan Armor to activate his ghost module as he was yanked off his feet. He crossed the ten meter gap in a matter of moments, landing with a barely-audible crunch of roofing tile. A similar sound a moment later alerted him to the arrival of his also-invisible partner, Erin Salm. An outline of her form appeared on his hud, thanks to the sync between their suits.

The pair quickly and noiselessly reached their insertion point, a patio on the second floor facing away from the street. Rejev noiselessly lowered himself to the patio, Erin right beside him. A glance through the glass doors revealed the empty master bedroom, so with a deft motion he picked the lock and carefully slid the door open. Rejev led the way deeper into the house, pausing outside an open door as he heard voices.

"-ou can't be serious," a male voice, probably Montgomery's, said. "They wouldn't dare."

"Really?" a lightly-accented female voice replied, from her tone Rejev could almost visualize the raised eyebrow. So that was the voice of Cassiopeia. He double checked to ensure his recording equipment was running. "You don't get out much do you, Jonathan?"

"I am well aware of what XCOM is capable of, Sarah," Montgomery said heatedly. "I grew up among them. They will not touch me without proof." Rejev scowled.

"They have proof you simpleton," Cassiopeia almost growled back. "Vaas was removed from the interrogation chamber this morning. They'll be after both of us by this evening. I have explicit orders to get you away from them."

Fierce pride swelled in Rejev's chest at that revelation. At least XCIS wasn't involved in the leak. He waved Erin forward and slipped into the room. Montgomery sat relaxed behind an impressively overcompensatory desk while Cassiopeia stood with her back to the door mere feet away from Rejev. "That's not going to happen," Montgomery insisted. "I'll know about it long before they make their move." Rejev grinned wryly. That was just too perfect an invitation.

Rejev smoothly moved behind the woman, taking great pains to keep his movements smooth and silent. Erin slipped around him, swiftly taking up her position beside the male traitor. The woman began to speak, but froze as the barrel of Rejev's plasma pistol pressed against her skull. A soft crackle filled the room as both Erin and Rejev's ghost modules were turned off. "Give us an excuse, love," he said calmly. "We only need one of you."

The expression of pure shock gracing the face of the arrogant fuck in the chair was sure to become one of Rejev's most treasured memories.

A moment later, Montgomery jerked and collapsed as Erin hit him with her arc thrower. Rejev made to do the same when the woman whirled without warning, her heel striking cleanly against his helmet, sending him toppling over. His grip instinctively tightened and the distinctive roar of plasma discharge filled the air as the woman threw herself up and over the floundering Rejev and disappeared down the hall, further into the house.

"Fuck!" he cried, thoroughly cursing his need to gloat. He activated his comm. "Casiopeia's making a break for it! Second floor, heading east! She knows we're here!" His mic turned off and he muttered, "and she's got one hell of a kick." He glanced at Erin and ordered, "Stay here and watch that idiot, I'll go after her."

She acknowledged his order and he took off after the woman in a bound. He caught sight of her disappearing down the stairs as he approached. "Fuck it," he muttered, and threw himself over the railing. He landed with a mighty crash mere feet from the woman as she hit the ground floor. She instantly spun around, one foot extended to take his legs out from under him.

The limb hit his armored calf and stopped cold. He was sure he was grinning ferally as he said, "Bit too heavy there, love." His fist shot out in a picture-perfect right cross and she toppled back with a cry, blood trailing through the air from her broken nose. He whipped out his arc thrower and shocked her before she could recover. "Now that's how you end a chase."

* * *

"The Citadel Council calls on Donnel Udina, Emissary from the Human Coalition," Councillor Tevos said formally. "Many concerns have been raised by the actions of your government. We would like answers."

The human dignitary stepped forward, close-cropped dark hair framing a hawkish visage. He bowed elaborately to the Council and nodded obligingly to the batarian ambassador to the side. "The Coalition would be happy to address any of your concerns, Councillors, Ambassador."

"At 22:37 Citadel Standard Time two days ago, the Human Coalition launched an assa-" Sparatus began, only to be cut off by an insistent chime from the petitioning platform. The human mumbled an apology, raised a hand, palm forward, and took a step back. He then moved his hand up to his ear and began to speak quietly, clearly into a communicator of some kind. Sparatus could only stare in shock. It had been many centuries since the Council had been told to wait. Eventually, he managed to give a sidelong glance at the other Councillors.

His colleagues were faring little better than he. Silence, broken only by the unintelligibly soft human voice, ruled the chamber for a long moment. Finally, Jath'Amon could take no more. "What do you think you're doing?!" he roared, pounding a fist into the podium before him.

Udina looked at the batarian sharply, then cut his eyes over to the Councillors. He mumbled something into his device then spoke audibly. "My apologies Councillors," he bowed again. "My people have recovered some items we believe belongs to you. I was merely attempting to arrange for their delivery."

"Oh?" Councillor Arolith said interestedly. His tone turned playful, almost sly. "What could that be?"

Udina ducked his head and said to his unknown partner, "Do it." He looked up again, locking his gaze with every member of the Council in turn, ending with the salarian. Something passed through their gaze, though Sparatus could not tell what. "Simply something that you had lost."

As he finished, an enormous whirl of purple light appeared at the top of the stairs before the Council's platform. It quickly spread out, forming a circle almost ten meters across. The interior of the circle swirled wildly before abruptly disappearing, taking with it most of Sparatus' view of the Council Chambers. Instead, the purple disk appeared to serve as a window into a small, obviously artificial, park, where a collection of thousands of individuals, from every species in Citadel Space stood calmly. A moment later, they were moving _through_ what he now recognized as a human wormhole and filling the Council Chamber as far as he could see.

Sparatus barely noticed his mandibles flexing wildly as he tried to recover from his shock. The sputtering noises Tevos was making made it clear he was not the only one having trouble with the surprise. "Wh- What is this?" he said, completely bewildered by the sudden appearance of thousands of new faces.

Udina looked decidedly smug as the portal closed behind him. "These good people are those we rescued from a lifetime of slavery on Adek." He directed a significant look at Jath'Amon and spoke, all the while glaring at the batarian. "To my understanding, a grievous violation of standing Citadel law."

Almost despite himself, Sparatus felt a great deal of respect for this move. He had been pushing for something to be done about the Hegemony's practice of slavery since before he had even been appointed Councillor. That the Coalition would put them in such a position was definitely testing the bounds of his self control. "That it is, Emissary," he said, a trace of his good cheer slipping through his disciplined countenance. "You have our thanks for their return." The other Council members nodded their agreement.

"Indeed," Jath'Amon interjected suddenly, the faintest trace of bitterness in his voice. Sparatus grinned internally. It was about time. The batarian glared viciously at the human. "However, we are not here for that. We are here to discuss the way you humans _murdered_ an entire city!"

Jeers and angry cries rang from the returned civilians, drowning out all other sound as their voices echoed throughout the gigantic chamber. The cacophony forced the human to cover his ears and the soundproofing barriers of the Council platform to spring to life. The freed slaves surged at the batarian ambassador angrily and Sparatus felt a jolt of fear. A riot would be deadly in the suddenly far too small room. C-Sec would never calm them in time.

The human emissary shouted something, obviously assisted by an amplifier of some kind since it was loud enough to be audible, though not intelligible, even through the soundproofed kinetic barrier. The group stilled abruptly at the sure to be almost deafening noise, though those closest to the human were clutching their ears in pain. He began to speak and Sparatus quickly turned off the barrier.

"-lping. Please, return to your homes, or wait in or near my office in the Presidium if you have further business with the Human Coalition. I will do everything in my power to help you after I am done here." An interminable moment passed as the crowd and the human regarded each other. Finally, the crowd began to disperse, trooping through the elevators down to the presidium or hopping in aircar taxis to wherever they needed to go. In less than twenty minutes, the crowd had all but completely vanished.

The human emissary turned back to the Council. "My apologies. You were saying?"

* * *

Sam Rejev regarded the woman on the far side of the interrogation room's two-way mirror with grim satisfaction. The boss had granted his request to lead Cassiopeia's interrogation. A small smile graced his lips at the thought. At least he'd have a chance to make up for his mistake during her capture. After several minutes of observing, and paging through XCIS' sparse dossier on her, he decided to start the process. He left the small recording room and swiftly made his way into the interrogation room proper.

The woman sat stonily, completely ignoring his presence. Her hands and feet had been bound tightly to the steel chair she sat in. He wasn't going to risk letting her use the cybernetic augments they'd found in her. He strolled calmly to the open chair and sat leisurely, the dossier in his hands placed onto the table. "Hello, Sarah... Walker, isn't it?" he said amiably.

The woman continued to ignore him. He grinned at her and shook his head. "It's rather rude to ignore people, you know?"

Still, she practiced her statue imitation. Rejev sighed heavily. "You realize that you're not helping yourself here, right?" Silence. He picked the dossier back up and continued, watching her out of his peripheral vision. Time to take it up a notch. "Alrighty then. I'll just keep you company for a while. I'm sure your father will be by to collect you soon enough, Ms. Lawson."

Her face went white, naked terror etched into every line. "Ah, I thought that might grab your attention," Rejev said casually. She mumbled something, too quietly for him to understand. "What was that?"

"Don't," she said softly. Her fear hung thick in the air. "Don't involve him. You have no idea what he'll do to me."

Rejev heaved a dramatic sigh, still affecting a friendly persona. "I'm afraid I know exactly what he'll do to you, Miranda. Henry Lawson is a very bad man, after all. But you know what?"" He locked gazes with his subject. "I don't care," he said firmly. He leaned over the table, making every effort to appear as imposing as possible. "Your actions have cost thousands of people their lives and jeopardized nearly everything the Coalition has been working towards. You'll be getting what's coming to you, as far as I'm concerned. But!" he leaned back in his chair with that exclamation, re-donning his affable mask. "I'm willing to help you to... disappear. All you have to do is cooperate. You'll still be going to prison of course, but no one needs to know who you really are."

She floundered for a long moment, clearly still off balance from being forced to face her deepest fear. "I can help you Miranda, but only if you help me," he prodded her, determined to keep her from recovering.

Her eyes hardened, fear giving way to something deeper, more primal. Rejev couldn't help but admire the fire in her gaze. "I can't," she said firmly, in a voice as unbending as steel. "I talk and she's dead. Do your worst, muton."

He shrugged, presenting a blasé exterior to cover his internal scowl. He really didn't want to cross this line. Steeling himself, he said, "As you wish, Miranda," he said and stood up. He picked up the dossier, subtly sliding a pre-selected page out of the folder such that it fell to the table before her. Her sudden gasp told him everything he needed to know.

He looked her in the eye, ensuring the message was conveyed. She surged at him, her bindings snapping taut without even an inch of give. "You tell him _anything_ and I will bathe in your blood!" she shouted wildly, visibly straining against her restraints. "You sectoid-fucking bastards won't touch her!"

Rejev weathered her rage, forcibly keeping his face blank. "I can and I will," he said calmly, reminding himself what this woman had done to force his gorge down. "Unless you tell me what I want to know."

She locked gazes with him, impassioned fury meeting detached professionalism. Several minutes passed in a silent battle of wills before she sagged in her seat. Her gaze falling to the paper that had fallen from the dossier. The photo and current location of one Oriana Lawson. "Cerberus," she said weakly, defeat clear in her tone and posture. "They call themselves Cerberus."

* * *

Sparatus quickly smothered the potent mixture of respect for the emissary's style and disdain for the man's audacity before it could show on his features. Tevos gave no external sign, but he had known her long enough to know she was going through something similar. Arolith, on the other talon, was much harder to read. The salarian impassively looked on, but Sparatus could not shake the feeling he had known this was coming. Arolith glanced over at him and flicked his gaze back to the human. Sparatus sighed internally. At least _this _salarian Councillor wasn't quite as aggravating as his predecessor had described Jaroll.

"That was... most enlightening, Emissary," Tevos' calm voice broke the long silence, a slight undercurrent of tension running through it. Udina, obviously certain his message had been conveyed, bowed to the Council and flashed a smug grin at the batarian ambassador, head cocked ever so slightly to his right.

Jath'Amon's grip on his podium tightened visibly as he glared heatedly at the emissary. Sparatus let a slight grin cross his features. It was good to finally see the self-righteous, slaving bastard put in his place. He forcibly stopped himself from further indulging in schadenfreude however. There were more important matters to discuss.

"Yes, most enlightening," he said softly. With an, externally, almost casual ease, Sparatus brought years of military discipline to the forefront of his mind. The human emissary stiffened as the turian's sheer presence filled the room. "And most distressing." He leveled a glare on Udina. "I will be blunt Emissary. What is the Coalition planning?"

The man stood tall, clearly affected by the sudden change in atmosphere and just as clearly unwilling to let it show. "We have no further plans for conflict at this time, Councillor," he said simply. "Our people were taken. We found where they were held and took them back, freeing over 2500 of your people from slavery in the process. We have no interest in further violence."

Tevos tapped a quick sequence into her omnitool. The chamber's enormous holographic projector sprung to life, showing one of the tamer videos captured from Adek. "You call this no interest?" she asked sharply. "These _abominations_ butchered tens of thousands of innocent people Emissary. You will understand if we say we are... skeptical of your claims."

"As you should be," he replied. Sparatus felt a jolt of fear at the admission. There was nothing the Citadel Fleet could do if the Coalition decided to push a bomb through into the Council chamber via portal. "After all, that was the point of deploying them." Udina waved at the hologram.

"Explain yourself," Arolith half-asked, half-said.

"The Chryssalids were once used against my people, in the Ethereal War, to break our wills," Udina began. "We know full well the terror they inflict. Anyone who attacks our people, supports those who attack our people, or attempts to profit off of the results of attacks on our people will be subjected to the same. We make neither excuses nor apologies." He smiled wryly. "If you were not wary of us for being willing to do so, you would not be members of this body."

"T-That's insane!" Tevos stuttered out. "You would kill thousands of innocents for the crimes of a single individual?!"

Udina glared fiercely at the asari. "No. We would do anything to protect our people," he said fervently. "We do not seek war. We want nothing more than to be allowed to live in peace. But we have been forced to the brink of extinction before. We will _not_ allow anyone to harm our people. No matter the cost."

Sparatus refused to admit it aloud, but approval sang through his veins at the human's words. They all too clearly echoed the very foundation of the Hierarchy's ideals. Fortunately, Tevos was far more objective. "Such actions will not be tolerated, Emissary," she all but hissed. "I am aware of your people's history, but such a course is not acceptable."

Udina's nostrils flared and he opened his mouth to respond, and stopped abruptly. His mouth closed with an audible clack and he closed his eyes and breathed heavily for several seconds. His eyes opened and he appeared much calmer. "Councillor, I will be frank. We do not care about your opinion of our methods." Tevos sputtered faintly. "I am here to answer your concerns and assuage your fears. Not to debate morality. The Coalition would like the violence to stop here. What would that require?"

"Information on this vessel," Sparatus chimed in quickly, seizing the initiative while Tevos recovered. He tapped a swift sequence and replaced the Chryssalid video with an image of the massive ship hovering above Adek.

"And viable DNA samples of a fertile Chry- Chryssalid," Arolith said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word. "As well as birth conditions and other miscellania."

Udina turned a surprised look on Arolith. "You want to clone fertile Chryssalids?" he asked. He looked back at Tevos. Sheer incredulity filled his tone. "And you call _us_ insane?"

"Oh?" Arolith interrupted before she could speak. "How is that any different from what you have done?"

The human stared Arolith straight in the eye and said, "If the Chryssalids we had unleashed had been fertile, there wouldn't be a sapient being left on that planet by now."

Sparatus choked on the air. "W-What?!" he shouted. Quickly re-composing himself, he barked, "Explain yourself. Now!"

Udina weathered his glare admirably, the only sign of his discomfort a tightening around his eyes. "Chryssalids have a gestation period of approximately fifteen seconds. When born, they burst from the zombie that carried their egg and are approximately half the size of the full grown samples you have seen. They then mature fully within thirty seconds."

"Impossible!" Arolith exclaimed. "Nothing can grow that fast!"

"Yet they do it anyway," Udina agreed. "That is why all of our Chryssalids are sterile and we have destroyed all samples of fertile Chryssalid DNA."

Tevos exhaled heavily. "Finally, something we can agree on," she said in a rush. Udina simply nodded. "However, in that case, I must insist that all Chryssalid samples be destroyed, their production banned, and their use outlawed."

Udina regarded her steadily for a long moment, then turned to face Sparatus. "First, I will address your concerns." When the turian nodded, he continued, gesturing at the hologram. "This vessel is the XCS _O'Connell_, the first of XCOM's Supercarriers, finest warship in our fleet."

Sparatus eyed the man, pushing every ounce of his military training into his glare. "And?"

Udina met his gaze for a long moment, but eventually was forced to look away. Sparatus enjoyed the small victory as the emissary continued. "And it is a non-combat craft." Sparatus couldn't keep his surprise off his face. Udina snorted. "A supercarrier is a completely self-sustaining delivery mechanism for the combat craft. Nothing more."

That was different, Sparatus thought. The Hierarchy had never considered building a warship not actually meant to be in combat. Such a design would not be terribly practical for a Hierarchy craft however. It would require far too much element zero. It made sense for the humans though, from what little he knew of their wormhole technology. He examined the image floating above them one last time. "One last question, emissary. How many do you have?"

Udina set his expression into a stubborn mold. "Enough." Sparatus sighed internally. He should have expected that. He met the human's eyes again, but this time the man's gaze was steady and unflinching. He nodded to his colleagues. They were not going to get any more.

"Very well," Tevos said. "Now, as for the Chryssalids..." she trailed off leadingly.

"The Coalition is prepared to sign and ratify a treaty classifying the use of Chryssalids as a crime against sapient life, and violators subject to everything that entails," Udina answered, surprising Sparatus. That was far easier than he had expected. What the human had left out was clear to the entire Council however.

"And the other conditions?" Arolith asked pointedly.

"No," Udina answered bluntly. Sparatus twitched in annoyance. That was not what he wanted to hear.

"Then we are at an impasse," Tevos said. "We will not permit your people to operate within our borders or conduct business with your government until such time as our conditions are met."

Udina's lip furled. "Fine," he conceded after several minutes thought. "We will agree to outlawing the production of complete Chryssalids, and we will allow no more than three Council Spectres at a time to operate within human space to ensure it. But we will keep our existing stock."

The Councillors glanced at each other, silently communicating as only long-time friends and allies can. Finally, Tevos spoke. "An acceptable compromise."

* * *

"Rejev, in position," he reported over the squad's comm from his assigned post, watching over the entrance to the underground bunker their investigation had revealed as the refuge of Cerberus' leader. "No movement." A beat later he said to his partner, "I can't shake the feeling we're gonna walk in there and find this guy petting a white cat and saying he expects us to die."

Erin rolled her eyes. "Shut it, Sam," she said. "This isn't a movie, that's not going to happen."

"C'mon, you can't honestly tell me this guy isn't going to be moustache-twirling-evil." She smacked the back of his head, but he persisted. "Ten credits says he puts on the act."

She glared at him, but sighed after a moment. "Fine, you're on," she grumbled good-naturedly. Rejev grinned. Easiest credits he'd ever made. There was no way this guy wasn't a drama queen.

Just then, their boss' voice came over the radio. "We are green. Remember, capture if possible, but don't risk yourselves for it. Go on my mark, weapons hot. Three... two... one... MARK!"

Rejev burst into motion, Erin and their SHIV, nicknamed Artoo, hot on his heels. He slid to a stop behind some cover from the door and swept his plasma rifle around, looking for hostiles. Erin slid past behind him and slapped a breaching charge against the door. Artoo hovered beside him, heavy plasma primed and ready. "Fire in the hole!" she cried, a moment before the charge exploded, filling the hallway beyond with deadly shrapnel. A beat later, another explosion sounded from the southeast. Rejev smiled grimly. He pitied anyone who tried to get out the back door. That meant going through the boss. "Clear!" Erin's voice cued him to abandon his overwatch and follow her into the bunker.

He stepped inside to an unexpected scene. A man, decked out in a grey-white uniform of some kind, hung pinned to the sloping ceiling by a foot long fragment of the door, blood dripping in a steady stream to the floor below, where it ran in channels down the slope before pooling outside the door at the end of the tunnel. Rejev rushed past the corpse and moved to the door under Erin's watch. He propped himself against the frame and slapped a charge on the door. He mimed a countdown with his fingers. At zero, the door blew open and a withering volley of plasma fire came bursting out.

"Holy fuck!" he shouted. "That's a heavy plasma!"

"I know!" Erin responded from her position. The edge of the doorframe he hid behind began to glow.

"Where the fuck did they get a heavy plasma?!" he shouted indignantly, panic beginning to edge into his tone. He had ten seconds, tops, before the frame gave way. His gaze flicked wildly around for a solution and landed on the robot. He sagged in relief. Now he had an idea. He ripped a smoke grenade off his belt and flicked it just past the doorway, then called, "Artoo! Clear the room!"

The drone chirped a string of beeps and whistles and shot down the hall, flying past Rejev with a rush of displaced air. Plasma cannons roared as the drone forced the enemy heavy to divert their fire. Rejev breathed a sigh of relief and rolled out from behind cover, half a dozen enemies visible through the smoke as bright outlines on his hud thanks to Artoo's targeting uplink. Plasma lanced from Erin's position behind him, tearing into and through the closest target, likely the only one she could reach from so far up the slope. He snapped his rifle around to the next target and let loose a bolt of brilliant green plasma, ending another life.

A quick motion activated his Ghost module, fully concealing him within the smoke. He bolted from the cloud and charged around to support the struggling Artoo. Thankfully, its kinetic barriers had lasted long enough to take down the heavy, but the three survivors were steadily chipping away at the drone. It had been designed to take a beating, far more so than even the strongest set of Titan Armor, but it couldn't take that kind of sustained fire for too long. Rejev circled around the fight and found a flanking position from the opposite wall. Plasma lanced out from his rifle and one of the hostiles collapsed, suddenly missing most of his head.

The remaining pair startled at their comrade's sudden death, giving the SHIV the opportunity to rain plasma on one while Erin picked off the last from the doorway. Rejev hesitantly peered around the now-still room, the remnants of his smoke grenade still hanging thick on the air. Finally, he announced, "Clear!" and the group relaxed marginally.

The trio regrouped, impatiently waiting that incredibly long handful of seconds for Artoo's shields to recharge, and arranged themselves around the room's only exit. Faint sounds of combat reached their ears from beyond the door. Rejev frowned. Hopefully the boss' team was having better luck than his was.

Erin stepped forward and slapped another breaching charge on the door, blowing it open with an earsplitting roar. The dust cleared quickly to show an empty hallway, ending in another door some twenty meters down and a third doorway between them, forming a T intersection. Their inspection of the hallway was cut short however, when the far door exploded inwards, sending the squishy members of the team back behind cover to avoid the shrapnel.

Weapons were brought to bear, but trigger fingers relaxed as a voice came over the comm. "Team-2 coming through," the boss said. "Let's get the son of a bitch."

"You got it boss-man," Rejev said, slipping around the doorframe and moving to the edge of the intersection, woman and drone trailing behind him. The boss' team settled in opposite them and he gave Rejev a finger countdown. As it reached the end, he slapped a charge on the door and blew it wide open.

The pair rushed into the room, rifles raised and pointed at the man facing away from them in a chair in the otherwise empty room, a hologram of some kind of dim star decorating the far walls. He took a final drag from his cigarette and extinguished it against the chair's armrest. "Ah," he said, still not moving to face them. "So you did find me. I had hoped to evade your notice. Alas, it seems your resources outmatch even my own considerable skills."

Despite himself, Rejev felt himself grinning. This nutjob really did fancy himself a Bond villain. "Jack Harper," he said, as sternly as he could manage. He kept his rifle trained on the bastard's head. "You are under arrest for treason."

The chair slowly spun around to face the agents, giving them their first good view of the man. He was handsome, in a way. The kind of chiseled good looks that only come naturally. Dark, neatly kept hair swept back over glittering eyes. Locking gazes with the man chilled Rejev to the bone. This was a true believer. "Is it truly treason to protect humanity?" he asked softly, his voice containing just enough innocent curiosity that Rejev almost believed he thought he was doing the right thing.

"You call siccing a group of slavers on defenseless people protecting humanity?" he asked incredulously, slowly moving toward the man and wary of a trap.

"Of course," the maniac said, pure conviction in his tone. He stood slowly, hands held freely before him. "It was bound to happen eventually. By sending them to Mindoir, we suffered minimal casualties, and XCOM's inevitable response has made quite clear to the rest of the galaxy what humanity can and will do when provoked. My actions have saved countless lives."

"You really believe that don't you?" Rejev asked incredulously. Harper nodded. "You're insane," he said simply, inching towards the maniac.

Harper merely smiled indulgently at him. "The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."

Harper jerked suddenly and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. Rejev slipped his Arc Thrower back into his belt and looked back at the doorway. His voice turned smug. "Looks like you owe me ten credits, Erin."

* * *

"The Council's business with the Human Coalition is concluded," Tevos announced formally. "We shall now serve as mediators to determine peace between the Coalition and the Batarian Hegemony. Ambassador, state your terms."

Jath'Amon cleared his throat, carefully regarding the assembled beings, and spoke firmly. "The Batarian Hegemony demands no less than 1.5 trillion credits and four tons of Elerium" Sparatus' mandibles flexed. That was not going to go over well with the humans.

True enough, when Udina spoke, it was with an undercurrent of tightly controlled anger. "No. That is ridiculous. You will not see an ounce of Elerium. And just for that, you won't see a dime."

"Your pets murdered tens of thousands of innocent batarians for the actions of a depraved lunatic," Jath'Amon countered, surprisingly calmly. "You will pay for your actions."

Udina glared at the batarian then took a long moment to compose himself. "You mean the tens of thousands of innocents in blatant violation of Citadel law?" he asked. Sparatus couldn't help but enjoy the way the ambassador's expression tightened at the transparent ploy.

"Most of those slain were not slavers, but slaves," he bit out angrily.

Udina smiled slightly. "So you admit the Hegemony has been ignoring this Council's decree outlawing slavery?"

Jath'Amon sputtered for a few seconds. "The cultural heritage of the Hegemony is not the issue at hand, human!" he finally said. "Your people butchered thousands of innocents. You cannot escape that. You _will_ pay reparations."

Udina regarded the ambassador shrewdly and said, "You're right." Sparatus gave the emissary a piercing look. That was not what he had expected at all. "The Human Coalition _will_ pay reparations." A beat passed. "If, and only if, the Batarian Hegemony finally brings itself in line with Citadel law."

Sparatus all but gaped at the human, barely contained mirth bubbling beneath his exoskeleton. That was just perfect. "W-What?!" Jath'Amon thundered.

"You said it yourself, Ambassador," Udina answered smoothly. "The majority of the deaths were slaves. They wouldn't have been there, nor would Vaas have had reason to bring my people to your world, if the Hegemony had complied with the Citadel Council and outlawed slavery. The Coalition will offer 1.2 trillion credits in reparations, on the condition that the Hegemony outlaws slavery and allows a joint XCOM and C-SEC task force to visit your worlds and ensure it."

The batarian ambassador's expression darkened rapidly, but Sparatus chose to speak before him. This was simply too perfect a chance to finally solve the problem of the Hegemony. "I agree." His fellow Councillors whirled on him. At Tevos' sharp look, he elaborated. "The Hegemony has been allowed to flaunt Citadel law for centuries, Ambassador. If you wish for our support, you will abide by our agreements." The emissary caught Sparatus' gaze and nodded sharply, relief briefly passing over his expression.

Jath'Amon's mouth worked soundlessly for several moments. "W-w-w-what?!" he repeated himself. "We have been members of the Citadel for centur-"

"It hardly counts as membership if you ignore the rules when they don't suit you," Arolith interrupted bluntly. "I third the motion."

The salarian's support caught Sparatus' off-guard, but it was very welcome. He looked to Tevos with a questioning expression. She sighed. "Very well," she said, so quietly only her fellow Councillors could hear. Louder, she continued. "It is the decision of this Council that we will support the Batarian Hegemony's claim for reparations from the Human Coalition only if they bring their laws in line with Citadel law."

Jath'Amon gaped at the Council. "This is an outrage!" he roared. "We have an agreement, Councillors!"

"An agreement your people have been willfully ignoring for centuries," Sparatus spat. "Do not be surprised when we do the same."

The ambassador gave a wordless scream of rage and pounded a fist into his podium. "As you wish," he spat angrily. "It is clear to me that the Batarian Hegemony is no longer welcome among this Council. Consider our embassy closed." Sparatus allowed himself to bask in his satisfaction. Finally, he no longer had to tacitly support slavers. Jath'Amon turned a four-eyed glare on the human. "This is not over human! We will have vengeance!"

With that, the batarian turned and stormed from the chamber, voluminous robes swirling in his wake. Sparatus resisted the urge for a parting shot, instead turning his attention to the emissary. "That was... interesting, Emissary," he said. "Masterfully done."

Tevos leveled a glare at the turian. "And most unfortunate," she said. "I find myself forced to admit to loathing your people's brand of diplomacy, Emissary."

Udina smiled slightly, allowing the asari's displeasure to slide off him. "I would be concerned if you didn't, Councillor. Is there anything further to discuss at this time?"

"No," she admitted tiredly. "I will be in contact later to work out the details of our agreement."

"As you wish." The human bowed and walked away.

* * *

"The accused shall stand," the judge declared firmly. Jack Harper stood smoothly, ignoring the camera flashes and constant undercurrent of commentary from the media box of the courtroom. He gazed steadily back at the judge, expression regal despite the circumstances. "Jack Harper, you have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit treason, conspiracy to commit terrorism, 16 counts of illegal arms trading, 2872 counts of accessory to kidnapping, and 4,123 counts of accessory to murder, all in direct relation to the attack on Mindoir two weeks ago. You have been sentenced to death by firing squad, to be carried out immediately. Do you have any last words for this court?"

Harper regarded the judge steadily and exhaled strongly. "I do, Your Honor." Jeers erupted from the crowd, and more than a few pieces of garbage were thrown his way. He carefully schooled his expression into regal neutrality. "I will be remembered as a monster. I _am_ a monster. I am personally responsible for the deaths of over four thousand innocent people, and for the suffering of thousands more." The crowd began to still at his words, enraptured by the man's sheer presence. He let a slight hint of the very real grief he felt leak into his voice. "I have crossed the line. There is no forgiveness for me, in this life or the next." The courtroom was silent, save the gentle hum of the media's recording equipment. He looked over to the reporters. "You will speak of me as a butcher. A bloodthirsty lunatic," he said matter of factly. "It is in your nature. But know this. My every action is, and has always been, for the betterment of mankind."

It was a testament to his oratory skills that no one reacted to his proclamation. "The people of Mindoir died to prove to the galaxy that Humanity is not to be trifled with." The fires of conviction burst to life behind his eyes, and none could meet his gaze for long. "We are mighty. We are powerful. We are Human!" he almost shouted. He continued after a beat, somewhat subdued. "I will pay for my sins, as must we all. I go willingly to my death. One such as I, one responsible for so much suffering and death, does not deserve to live." He panned his gaze around the spellbound audience. "You will hate me. You will kill me. And you will remember my words this day," he said, a note of finality creeping into his voice. "My actions killed thousands, but ultimately saved _billions_. Life demands sacrifice." He looked back to the judge. "I ask for no mercy nor leniency; my hands are stained with far too much red. I ask only that Humanity stands strong. Terra Victoria."

Jack Harper sat down. The courtroom remained silent for several minutes.


	8. Duty Stations

**Chapter 7: Duty Stations**

"Ugh," John Shepard groaned, massaging the rapidly growing bruise on his chest as he made his way to his quarters. "I'm gonna feel that one tomorrow," he muttered. Damn Tsu and her cheating kung fu shit. That spar was painful.

He continued grumbling to himself as he strode briskly through the metal halls of the XCS _Legetho_, nodding a greeting at those he passed. He reached the gym's transit hub in a few minutes and hopped on the nearest tram headed for the sleeping quarters. It left nearly the instant he sat down, the gentle sway of the car doing little to help him fight off his exhaustion.

Thankfully, he remained conscious until it stopped at the dormitory section of the ship. With a grateful goodbye to the VI controlling it, Shepard stepped off and headed straight for his bed. A few minutes walk brought him to his door, but as soon as he opened it he was nearly bowled over by half a ton of dog-shaped metal. "Rex!" he cried, stumbling back. "Calm down damnit, you're gonna kill me one of these days."

The dog stepped back and sat down, grinning unrepentantly at the man. Shepard sighed. "Sometimes, I think I shouldn't have rebuilt you," he said with a teasing grin. The cyberdog whined, prostrating itself before him. He rolled his eyes. "You know that doesn't work anymore right?"

And it was true. Rex's new chassis had been fully kitted out for war. No longer did he appear an overgrown puppy. The new frame retained the core shape and coloring of a German Shepard, but the new additions utterly spoiled any attempt he made at looking pathetic. Missile racks stood out on his shoulders, cannibalized from a requisitioned Titan Armor module, and the telltale green of a SHIV's plasma cannon emanated softly from the dog's mouth. Rex's current form truly was an avatar of war, and he had saved the lives of most of John's team at least once. John scowled. Damn batarians. Even with their government dead and the rest embroiled in civil war, they still manage to cause humanity problems. The dog whined gently, as if sensing his thoughts, and nudged his hand.

Shepard started, then smiled sadly at the robot and rubbed its ears. "Thanks boy," he said gently. Rex barked and sent him another doggy grin. He moved further into his room, shedding his sweat-stained workout gear as he went, unable to shake the melancholy that had settled on him. Bah. It'd been years since he'd felt this bad. There was only one thing to do when it happened.

He walked over to his nightstand and gently hefted a small picture frame. "Hey sis," he said sadly, studying the picture of the vibrant young girl. "Hope you and the folks are doing well these days." There was no reply of course, but just speaking to her memory made things so much easier to bear. "Same old here. You remember last time we talked about how I signed up with XCOM right?" He waited a beat, almost hearing her response. "I was a bit screwed up at the time. Just woke up from a month-long coma after you died, then got told Mom and Dad were gone too." He chuckled lightly. "I gave the doc one hell of a scare there. Almost put him through the wall, I was so angry."

"It worked out though. XCOM heard about it and offered me a job. Just in time too, it turned out." He sighed. "Sorry, I know you've heard all this before. I just gotta vent, y'know?" More silence, but he smiled anyway, the picture in his hands coming to life in his mind's eye. "Anyway, four years after I enlisted, the Hegemony tried to start shit again. They were still sore over Adek or something, I guess. I don't pretend to understand the four-eyed sectoids."

He grinned wryly. "They hired a bunch of pirates to hit Elysium. Apparently they thought we didn't learn our lesson from Mindoir." He chuckled. "Fuckers didn't make it within a lightyear of the system. Course, once we learned who was supplying them, we weren't about to let that continue. And I got picked to join the raid. Me, a no-name grunt." He puffed up his chest in an overblown caricature of pride. "They knew damn well that I'm the best damn d-psi there is."

Shepard stopped for a moment, as if listening. He smiled fondly. "Yea, you probably would've been better than me. Brat." His smile turned sad. "Anyway, they inserted us on Khar'shan with orders to kill everyone in charge right quick, and we were making a pretty good show of it. The Chancellor," he spat the title like a curse. "tried to run, and I completely lost it." He shuddered heavily, until Rex crept up and nosed his head under his hand, looking up at him steadily. He rubbed the dog's head. "Thanks boy."

Turning back to the photo with a deep breath, he continued. "Can't really remember what happened next, it's all an angry haze, but from the recordings, I pulled his shuttle out of the sky and threw it into the closest thing they had to a capital building." He sighed a heavy breath. "They gave me a title for it too. 'Carnifex of Khar'shan'. Kinda catchy ain't it?" he asked bitterly.

He paused to "listen" again. "No, I'm not," he agreed. "I killed a lot of people that day, most of them as innocent as they could be. There's nothing there to be proud of. But it needed to be done." His omnitool chimed an incoming call alert and he took a shaky breath. "Anyway, thanks for listening sis. Talk to you later."

He set the picture frame down with a final fond look and hurriedly tried to compose himself. When his emotions were as controlled as he thought he could manage, he answered the call. "Shepard here."

"Lieutenant, report to the captain's quarters immediately," the voice on the other end said quickly.

"Understood, Shepard out." When the call was terminated, he muttered, "Well, this should be interesting."

* * *

Ten minutes after receiving the call, Shepard stepped up to the captain's door and unleashed a mighty yawn. "Damnit," he muttered tiredly. "Really wish this could've waited until after my nap." He shook himself back to a vague semblance of alertness and knocked on the door.

"Enter," the call came back an instant later, so Shepard complied, stepping inside the spacious office and snapping to attention. A slim, almost elderly woman sat behind a plain desk idly filling out forms, a pair of spartan yet comfortable looking chairs before it. To his right, a closed door separated this office from the captain's living quarters. Shepard took in the austere lack of decoration and had to wonder, did Captain Montgomery keep the place this empty? He had never met the man, but by all accounts he was a family man through and through. Shepard couldn't see such a man not littering the office with pictures of family. That would probably explain why he resigned when his son's involvement with Cerberus came to light.

A light cough suddenly interrupted his musings and he jumped in surprise, berating himself for letting his exhaustion derail his thoughts. His attention snapped to the captain, who was trying and, probably deliberately, failing to suppress a slight grin. He blushed faintly and gave her a salute.

"Lieutenant Shepard, reporting as ordered," he said as she returned his salute. "You wanted to see m-" he was cut off by a prodigious yawn that he utterly failed to suppress. His blush deepened while the captain chortled at him with a questioning glance. "Sorry ma'am," he said abashedly, forcefully tightening his stance. "The call caught me right after a workout."

"At ease, Lieutenant," Captain Minerva Rollins replied. The slim woman smiled gently at him, looking less like the commander of one of the fourteen XCOM Supercarriers and more like someone's doting grandmother. "It's quite alright. I should have expected as much. Please take a seat."

Shepard seated himself quickly, thankful to be off his feet again. He slouched slightly in the chair, military discipline and protocol unable to completely overcome his exhaustion. "Thank you ma'am," he said gratefully. He directed a questioning gaze at her, wordlessly prompting her to start.

She nodded and spoke. "As you are no doubt aware, your actions on Khar'shan and in subsequent operations against the Batarian Loyalists have earned you quite a bit of attention. Most of it is even positive."

"Thank you ma'am, but I was just doing my job," he deflected, uncomfortable with praise for some of those actions, but not quite willing to outright reject it.

The woman regarded him steadily for a long moment. Shepard met her gaze at first, but quickly grew far too uncomfortable and broke it, locking his eyes on her nose. Her smile turned a touch grim. "Nevertheless, you've earned every bit of it." Shepard winced internally and nodded. Message received. "That is why you have been chosen," she continued. He looked at her in surprise, the question he was barely keeping himself from asking clear on his face. "XCOM High Command has, upon my recommendation, selected you to lead the ground complement attached to a new ship." Shepard's jaw dropped. That woke him up like nothing else. She slid some papers across the desk to him and slapped a pen down next to it. "You're being transferred immediately. Congratulations, Lieutenant-Commander."

"T-Thanks," he stammered out. Catching the lapse in protocol, he hastily corrected himself. "Err, Thank you, ma'am." Quickly signing the promotion and transfer papers, he asked the captain, "Do you know anything about my new command?"

"Not much, no," she replied. "Just a name. You'll be serving as XO on the XCS _Normandy_."

* * *

"So what do you think think of this whole thing?" Shepard asked noncommittally as he stepped out of the shuttle that had carried him to Arcturus Station, where his new ship was awaiting him in the construction docks. A happy bark rang out in answer. "Right, should've expected that," he said. "You're always happy as long as I bring the oil."

Rex yipped his agreement. Shepard shrugged. "Good to hear." He stopped abruptly and pawed at his rucksack for a few moments. "Huh," he said, nonplussed. "Looks like I forgot it."

Rex let out a low whine and slumped in place, utter sorrow etched into every piece of his frame. Shepard could almost see rain clouds forming inches above the dog's head. He grinned and tapped a pocket on his bag. "Oh," he said with faux surprise. "Here it is."

Rex growled playfully and jumped at the man, only to stop abruptly, suspended two feet in the air by purple tendrils. He looked at his body then cocked his head and whined inquisitively. "No, I'm not letting you down you overenthusiastic bucket of bolts. You're gonna hurt someone."

The dog's head drooped and ears lowered as he whined, the perfect picture of dejection. "Oh come on now, nobody's actually going to buy that."

"I would," a new voice interrupted, earning a yip of approval from the dog. Shepard cursed in surprise, losing his concentration and dropping Rex. He landed heavily, but, thankfully, the sturdy bulkhead was undamaged by his fall.

Shepard turned to face the source of the voice. A young man stood a few meters away, a wide grin etched into his bearded jaw. The man was short and slim, but exuded a kind of presence that made him seem much larger. Possibly because of the network of scars tracing straight lines all over his visible skin. He nodded a greeting to Shepard when he noticed the commander's gaze. "Hey there," he directed a look at the insignia on Shepard's shoulder, and straightened abruptly, suddenly looking slightly nervous. He snapped off a salute. "Lieutenant-Commander, sir."

Shepard grinned at the man as he returned the salute. "At ease, Mr..."

"Moreau, sir. Helmsman Jeff Moreau," the newcomer responded, relaxing a bit. "Though most people call me Joker."

"Good to meet you, Joker. The name's Shepard," he replied. A bark from beside him cut in. "And this pile of soon-to-be-scrap is Rex."

Joker eyed the dog and let out a low whistle. "I don't wanna know where you come from, Commander, that needs a guard dog with a missile rack."

Rex huffed, deliberately turning away from the pilot. Shepard grinned and put a hand on the dog's head. "Rex here is my SHIV. He started as a stock cyberdog, but I had to rebuild him a couple times and some... additions, shall we say, found their way in."

"Impressive Commander," he commented. "He's one hell of a fancy piece of equipment." Rex nearly preened where he sat. A mildly awkward silence descended between the two men as they looked for something to say.

Finally, Shepard's curiousity won out over his courtesy. "No offense, but I've got to ask. What's with all the scars?" he gestured weakly at the man, eyes tracing a particularly large line that started from his thumb and passed up into his bicep-length shirt sleeves.

"Ah these?" Joker asked easily, clearly more amused than offended by the question. "Had to get my skeleton replaced."

"What?!" Shepard asked, completely taken aback. Even Rex chipped in with a yelp.

"Yea, I was born with Vrolik's Syndrome. Brittle bone disease," he continued at Shepard's blank look. "I finally stopped growing a few years back and could get fitted with replacements." A strange mix of bitterness and excitement laced his tone. "Took 'em most of a decade to get everything swapped out, but I can actually walk now! The scars suck, but I'm due to start a nanobot therapy to hide 'em during my next cruise."

Shepard couldn't help but match his grin. The pilot's enthusiasm was infectious. "Good to hear." He glanced at his watch. "Sorry, but I gotta cut this short. You know where dock 67-A is at?"

"Here for the _Normandy_ then, are ya?"

"You know about the _Normandy_?" Shepard asked, surprised. The briefing he received had made it seem fairly secretive.

"Best damn ship out here," Joker said, almost lovingly. "It's the pinnacle of human engineering, combining both elerium and eezo tech into a brand new type of vessel. With 15 years in design, and eight in construction, it's the most advanced ship in the XCOM fleet."

"How the hell do you know all that?" Shepard asked mostly calmly, internally beginning to fret about a security breach.

"I'm the pilot." And like that, Shepard's worries began to dissolve. "They have the best ship, so they asked the best damn pilot in the galaxy to helm it."

"Oh?" Shepard said. Time to dangle the bait. He deliberately gave the pilot an obvious once-over, then just as obviously dismissed him. Turning to Rex he asked, "Is Ramses really around here somewhere?"

Rex yipped a negative. Joker looked baffled.

"Truman?"

Another negative. Joker started to scowl.

"Oram?"

Rex barked at the same time Joker said, "Alright already, I get it!" He glared pointedly at Shepard's ear-to-ear grin. "I'll have you know, I can fly rings around all of them. I'm the greatest pilot this side of the galactic core."

Shepard nodded at him. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you'll have to prove that."

"You're on, Commander!" Joker almost shouted with a friendly grin. He adopted a high-pitched voice. "I'll show you, and your little dog too!" Joker chuckled lightly to himself. "Now, let's get to the ship, follow me."

* * *

A brisk walk followed by a short tram ride ensued, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine hallways. After a short twenty minutes, the trio reached their assigned docking bay. Joker strode ahead, stopping at the massive floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the hangar. "Here she is," he said, pride and affection thick in his voice. "The _Normandy_."

Shepard stepped up beside him and let out a long, low whistle. The engineer in him was gushing over the elegant, swooping lines of the easily 250 meter long ship. A circular tube made up the main body of the ship, extending forward roughly 200 meters. At that point, the bottom cut in sharply to almost half the height of the vessel and a door to the cargo bay was formed in the resulting wall. The ship continued forward the remaining 50 meters from there in a vertical semicircle, a pair of tines protruding from the underside of the tip. Large wings flared out and downwards from the halfway point on the body, each bearing a pair of massive anti-matter engine nascelles, the innermost of which both extended forward nearly the whole length of the ship. A tailfin, topped by a relatively small triangular wing, extended upwards from the rear of the vessel, vaguely reminiscent of old Earth aeroplanes. The ship was predominantly white, with large sections of the sides and wings painted black, and a single red stripe highlighting each side of the vessel. Enormous white letters on the black paint read NORMANDY - SR1.

"She's a thing of beauty," Shepard gushed, completely unable to tear away his gaze. "Wish I'd been part of the construction."

"I just want to pilot it. This baby's got an elerium generator hooked up to a freaking enormous eezo core. Theoretical estimates put her at almost 20 lightyears in a day, without even using the wormhole generator."

Shepard gave off another whistle. "Wow." The actual numbers needed to achieve such a feat flashed through his mind. "That's... that's impressive." That understatement stung. The theory was simple enough, but trying to actually implement such a massively powerful mass effect field required mind-boggling levels of power.

Joker grinned widely at the commander. "That's nothing," he said. "She's also got anti-matter reaction thrusters on top of a gravity drive." Shepard gave him a blank look, unsure why that was so impressive. Joker scowled lightly. "Gropos," he muttered under his breath with just the right amount of disdain. "She's got forward thrusters _and_ an omnidirectional drive. With me at the helm, she'll be able to _dance_," he said excitedly. His gaze moved back to the ship. "I think I'm in love."

"Heh," Shepard chuckled lightly, turning to head to the ship's gangplank. "I'm on my way there at least." A sad whine snaps him around to look at Rex. The dog had apparently tried to one-up his earlier pity-party and was now all the way on the ground, wallowing morosely. Shepard felt his eyebrow raise. "What the hell?"

Joker took one look at the dog and burst into uncontrollable laughter. Shepard flashed him a helpless look and he descended even further into mirth. "What the hell is going on here?" he wondered, completely bewildered by his companions. Rex looked at him with wide eyes and it was clear that if he were organic, tears would have been bubbling in them. Joker laughed even harder, outright gasping for breath. What in the galaxy was the hunk of junk crying about now? He'd been fine until they saw... the... Normandy. Shepard groaned and buried his face in his hand. "Really?" he asked, now completely exasperated. He looked at the dog. "You're jealous of a _spaceship_?"

Rex just stared at him with soulful robotic eyes. Shepard rolled his eyes "Ugh, get up you crazy robot. It's a spaceship, you're not being replaced." Rex whined pitifully. "You're really gonna do this, aren't you?"

An affirmative, happy bark followed by an instantly mournful stare answered him.

"I am far too sober for this," he groused quietly as Joker finally started to recover from his bout of hysterics. "You're far too sober for this." He pulled his rucksack over his shoulder and pulled a small packet from one of its pockets. "Here," he said, throwing the packet at the dog. "Just knock that off."

Rex barked happily and caught the object in its mouth, quickly "eating" the semi-organic power cell that sufficed as a treat for most cyberdogs. He stood and rushed to Shepard's side, where he sat at the dog equivalent of attention. Shepard rolled his eyes again and looked to Joker, who had taken on an unhealthy pallor from lack of oxygen. "You alright there, Jeff?"

"Fi- fine," he panted. "Jus-just haven't laughed that hard in a while. Woo," he said heavily, rising to his full height. "Thank the gods we never met before the procedures. I'd never have survived that many broken ribs."

Shepard scowled at him lightly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Glad we could entertain."

"Good to hear, Commander," he replied flippantly. "I'm sure the rest of the crew will oblige you too."

Oh god, Shepard thought. He was right.

"C'mon," Joker said, intruding into his thoughts. "Let's head in. I've still got some down time, so I'll give you the tour."

"Appreciate it," Shepard replied, shelving his worries for now. "Been awhile since I've been on anything other than a carrier or a shuttle."

"Figured. Gropos don't normally see much time inside this kind of ship." And with that, they were outside the airlock. Identification was passed to the junior officer on deckwatch, and he waved them through the door, which quickly sealed behind them. A decontamination grid flared to life, sweeping over the trio and eliminating any unwanted organic life they may be carrying unknowingly. The grid settled and the inner doors opened with a soft hiss, sliding apart to reveal the gleaming metal hallway beyond. "C'mon, we'll start from the best seat in the house," Joker said, stepping through the door and turning left. Shepard and Rex followed easily, entering the _Normandy_'s cockpit not even a full meter away from the airlock.

Holographic displays filled Shepard's vision, full of readouts and controls he had no hope of understanding. A pair of chairs sat before them, clearly where the pilots were supposed to sit. Switches, lights and knobs covered every surface he could see, covering everything from fuel injection rates to weight distribution control and everything in between. The entire cockpit gave off an air of orderly chaos that, frankly, made his brain hurt. Shepard looked around and said, "I have no idea how to use any of this, but it makes one hell of an impression."

"I know, right?" Joker asked rhetorically. "I almost don't want to admit it, but the Citadel knows their computers, way better than we do. This setup is just like an omnitool, haptic feedback on a holographic construct to trick you into thinking it's hard-light. I'm kinda gonna miss my old joystick, but the simulations with these have sold me on it."

"I couldn't say," Shepard said distractedly, trying to figure out how the holographic controls were supposed to actually work. "It looks unintuitive as all hell."

Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard noticed a blue flare spring to life, resolving into another hologram. This one of a blue sphere with a slit vertically bisecting it, much like a reptilian pupil. A new, feminine voice entered the conversation, the pupil-like slit widening and shrinking in time with it, as if it were a mouth. "Helmsman Moreau quite spectacularly failed his first four simulations," it said emotionlessly. Shepard boggled at the thing, while Joker began to sputter. "He has improved rapidly since, however."

"_Thank you_, EDI," Joker almost growled, clearly embarrassed and flustered. "Are there any more of my humiliating secrets you want to share?"

"Not at this time, Helmsman Moreau," it answered. A slight hint of something he couldn't identify entered its tone. "Maybe if you ask again later." Shepard levelled a confused stare at the orb.

"That's got to be the most compelling conversation I've ever seen out of a virtual intelligence," he said, interest piqued. Turning to Joker, he asked, "How the hell did they manage it?"

"I am a fully sapient artificial intelligence," the orb responded before Joker could, wholly snaring Shepard's attention. "During the designing of the _Normandy_, it was decided that a human operator was insufficient for certain tasks. The Coalition brokered a deal with Synthetic Insights for the knowledge of creating synthetic sapience. XCOM's brightest minds then used that knowledge to create me, the Enhanced Defense Intelligence, or EDI. The first human AI."

"Oh, um, wow," Shepard said, a tad overwhelmed. He waved weakly. "I'm Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard, the new XO." A beat passed, and he winced as he realized he'd forgotten something. He waved a hand at Rex. "And this is Rex, my SHIV."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Commander." The orb spun to face Rex. "And you as well, Rex." Rex huffed, turning around and sitting down, deliberately facing away from the orb. EDI's "mouth" bounced a few times. Despite himself, Shepard could detect a hint of confusion in her tone as she continued, "I am afraid I do not understand."

"Don't worry about him," Shepard waved it off. "He was already jealous of the ship, finding out it has an actual AI has probably just made him grumpy." He gave the dog a look and asked, "Isn't that right?" Rex chuffed, but made no other motion. "See? He'll get over it."

"If you are sure, Commander."

"I am. Now, what do you do here that a human can't?"

"During combat, I operate the electronic counter-measures and cyberwarfare suites, as well as manage the _Normandy_'s complement of three _Tornado_-class space combat drones."

"_Tornado_-class?" Shepard asked. "That's the new design, correct? Eleven meters with a fusion lance?"

"Yes, Commander. It also features a pair of weapon hardpoints capable of supporting either plasma or laser cannons as required. They will be a great asset in the _Normandy_'s combat operations."

"That sounds... incredibly useful," he agreed slowly. Something she'd said tickled his curiousity and he asked, "What duties do you perform outside of combat?"

"I monitor and maintain the _Normandy_'s Transport Infantry Vehicle and Heavy Weapons Platform, both of which have been placed under your command for ground operations." Shepard nodded and she continued. "I also monitor, and when necessary operate, the Wraith cloaking system."

"Wraith?" he repeated curiously. "I'm guessing that means they finally solved the power-scaling problems with the Ghost's phasing system."

This time, Joker answered. "Got it in one," he said, somewhat surprised. "I'm no engineer, so you'd have to check with them if you want more details, but if I remember the briefing I didn't understand right, they found that by applying a specialized mass effect field to the 'phase transducer', whatever that is, they can drastically lower the energy costs."

Shepard grinned ferally. "So on top of everything else, this is an honest-to-God stealth ship?"

"Correct," EDI replied.

"This ship is amazing," he said matter-of-factly. Rex chuffed again and Shepard could almost hear him saying 'I could do that if I wanted to'. He placed his hand on the dog's head and pet him gently, causing the dog to give him a long-suffering look. EDI spoke, ignoring the byplay, if she even noticed it.

"Thank you, Commander. Will that be all?"

"Yeah, I think so," he replied after a moment's thought.

"Logging you out, Shepard," she said, and the orb blinked out. He turned away from where it had resided, only to see Joker wearing what he was coming to understand was the pilot's signature friendly grin.

"And that's the cockpit. Wanna see the rest of her?" Shepard nodded eagerly. The cockpit alone was sending his inner geek into nerdgasms. He was sure the rest of the ship would be equally impressive.

Joker led the way back from the cockpit, down a walkway between two rows of computer terminals, all of them using the bizarre new holographic interfaces. A couple of the stations were even manned by some techs, who nodded at Joker and saluted Shepard when they noticed him. "These are the secondary weapon controls," the pilot explained as the trio passed. "It was inspired by the Citadel's GARDIAN systems, but we put our own twist on it. They're both point defenses and a mid to short range combat option."

Shepard arched an eyebrow. "Doesn't sound all that useful to me. Past a thousand clicks they won't do more than annoy anything with half-decent ablation."

"Hence the mid to short range," Joker rejoined.

Shepard nodded idly, not caring enough about the ship-to-ship weapons of the boat to continue the conversation. He was far more interested in watching the techs use their consoles, the physical manipulation of holographic constructs utterly fascinating to him. Joker seemed to notice his inattention as they neared the end of the walkway, because he coughed and directed the commander's attention at the triangular shape defined by a series of terminals and rails in the center of the room beyond. A hologram of the galaxy spun lazily in the center of the design. "And this is the CIC. The captain's supposed to sit over there," he waved at simple chair on a raised platform overlooking the hologram from the rear of the shape. In what was obviously anything but coincidence, the chair gave whoever sat in it an unimpeded view of nearly every crew station on the bridge. "And look over the rest of the crew." Another motion encompassed the duty stations scattered around the edge of the room and the railing. "A Turian design the brass wanted to try out." He mock-scowled. "Not sure I like the captain looking over my shoulder though."

Rex chuffed and sent a look at the pilot, who surprised Shepard by understanding it. "Don't give me that," he said, eyeing the dog. "I don't trust anyone who makes more than me." Rex just glowered at him and Joker, clearly confused, asked the other human present, "What'd I say?"

Shepard coughed into his fist to hide his grin. "I think you said you don't trust him." Joker's jaw dropped and eyes bulged as he realized what was being implied.

He stared at the dog. "Holy crap! Seriously?"

Rex took one look at the pilot and started a low, yipping laugh. Shepard relied on years of military training to stop from joining him. EDI's orb appeared suddenly from a nearby projector and she said, "SHIVs do not collect a wage, Helmsman Moreau. That was a joke."

Joker choked audibly a few times, levelling a glare at the dog. "Damnit," he groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Fooled by a dog. Can I get any lower?"

"There are still two decks below you, Helmsman," EDI chipped in, completely deadpan. Shepard could not honestly tell if she was being helpful or trying to make a joke.

"Not what I meant, EDI," he said exasperatedly. Turning to Shepard with his face twisted into a thunderous scowl, he bit out angrily, "Let's just get on with it. And keep your dog on a leash." He stormed over to the nearby elevator, entering it without a word. Shepard and Rex followed, and as they entered, Rex let out a low, sad whine. Joker's stony visage cracked slightly, letting the first hints of a helpless grin slip out. He glanced sidelong at the dog and let the smile grow. "That was pretty good though."

A happy bark filled the air and Rex nuzzled Joker's hand, earning himself a light scratch.

The elevator closed and Shepard felt the slight vertigo of sudden downward motion. A brief moment later, the doors opened to the middle deck. "This is the crew deck," Joker said, stepping out into the hallway before the door. The hall ran perpendicular to the elevator door, stretching at least 15 meters across, with a door on either end and two more doors along the far wall. On either side of the elevator, a pathway opened to the rest of the level. Joker pointed at the doors directly opposite the level. "Crew quarters are in there, bu-" Shepard cut him off by moving toward the doors, only to stop as Joker continued. "Hang on, Commander. XO has their own quarters. I'll show you in a sec."

"Works for me," Shepard said with a shrug, turning his attention back to the pilot.

Joker indicated the door on the left end of the hallway. "Personal lockers in there." He pointed at the other side. "That's the lounge. Not much there yet, but a break room is always nice."

"Ain't that the truth?" Shepard asked rhetorically. Joker nodded and led the way around the elevator column and into the other half of the deck. A pair of tables dominated the open space, with rows of chairs, a few occupied, along them. Further back, a small galley sat off to the side, right before a series of steps rose towards the nose of the ship, ending at a sealed door.

On either side of the room were good sized rooms. The left was closed and Shepard could only guess its contents. On the right however, large windows along its walls gave a clear view into what was obviously a medbay. Joker stepped up and began pointing things out.

"This here's the mess," he started, waving at the tables. He pointed at the rightmost room. "As you can guess, that's the sickbay." The door at the far end of the room was next. "That's the service entrance for the main gun."

"I read about that," Shepard said, secretly enjoying the way Joker's face fell. He clearly wanted it to be a surprise. "Stripped down _Annihilator_ that fires a half-meter wide fusion round at almost 1500 kilometers a second."

"It's even better than that!" Joker said triumphantly, his grin clearly communicating his joy at still being able to surprise Shepard. "The smaller size meant smaller hardware and that let them work a Blaster Launcher guidance package into it. The _Normandy_ packs the biggest and best punch for her size of any ship in the galaxy."

"God damn..." Shepard breathed quietly. He'd studied Blaster Launchers a couple years ago, with the ultimate goal of integrating one into Rex, but the guidance package was simply too unwieldy to fit in the chassis. And the bigger the projectile, the bigger the guidance package needed to be. That the _Normandy_'s designers had fit an even partial _Annihilator_ scale guidance package invisibly into a ship the size of the _Normandy_ was honestly making him, one of the finest combat engineers in XCOM, feel like a rank amateur. "This ship is somewhere between making me cry tears of joy and weeping at my own inadequacy."

Joker grinned easily. "Don't let it get to you Commander. The eggheads spent gods only know how many years working on it. From what I've seen, you're not half bad." He shot a deliberate glance at Rex. "Then again, maybe you are."

Rex shot the pilot a look that Shepard could only call 'betrayed' and whined gently.

"Nuh-huh," Joker said. "I'm on to you now. That's not gonna work." Rex's ears started quivering. "Not I said!" Joker insisted. Shepard chuckled as Rex plodded up to him and pawed at his leg gently, gaze locked with the pilot's. "I am on to you," he said slowly, carefully enunciating each word. Rex shrunk back, the half-ton war machine visibly cowering before the small pilot. "Damn it all..," he muttered under his breath as he sagged in place, conceding defeat. "Does _anyone_ ever win against you?"

Rex immediately stood up, flashing a canine grin at Joker and huffing a proud negative, and returned to his owner's side. Shepard roared with laughter, drawing curious looks from the few seated in the mess. "Now you see what I have to deal with," he said, taking great pleasure in the role-reversal of his first meeting with Joker.

"Yeah, yeah," Joker groused. "And you just had to bring him with you to share the misery." He glared at a smugly unrepentant Rex for a long moment. "Stupid mutt," he grumbled under his breath. "Back to the tour," he forcibly changed the subject and pointed at the last door. "That's the XO's quarters. You want to get settled in, or should I show you the rest of the ship?"

"I think I'll unpack now," Shepard answered. "I'm getting a little sick of carrying everything. We've still got a while 'til departure. I can take a look around on my own in a bit."

"Sounds good, Commander. Let me know if you need any help around here." Joker waved as he left, presumably to head back to the cockpit. Shepard returned the wave and headed to his new quarters. The door slid open as he approached and EDI's globe appeared beside it.

"The Executive Officer's quarters are now yours Commander. Alert me if you require anything."

"I will, thanks EDI." The orb blinked out and Shepard moved into the room. It was a good bit larger than his old quarters on the _Legetho_, but then he supposed it had to be if he was going to have somewhere to do the paperwork being a proper officer required. A desk stood along one wall and a military standard bed along the opposing side. The only other furniture being a small nightstand beside the bed. He waited a moment to take it all in, then said to himself, "Yea, this'll do."

* * *

Unpacking hadn't taken long, Shepard had long ago learned how to travel light. Nearly as soon as he finished, he had left his quarters to explore the third and final deck of the _Normandy_. He and Rex quickly found themselves in the ship's armory, directly opposite the cargo bay, surrounded by a bevy of fancy new toys. He prowled through the weapons and armor modules, looking for anything that he may want to incorporate into his loadout. He paused briefly when he spotted a mass of webbing marked as an armor module, and he picked it up just as a feminine voice spoke. "I'd be careful with that one if I were you, John."

Shepard jumped, badly startled and spun to face the source. A woman in her late twenties stood framed in the doorway, dark brown hair hanging to her shoulders. Shepard stared, vaguely recognizing her. "Lauren?" he tried cautiously. The woman stepped closer and it was confirmed. Shepard grinned widely. "Lauren Kadderal! It's great to see you again." He paused, looking thoughtful, then continued, surprise in his voice. "Wow, has it really been 9 years?"

"Just about," she agreed. "Ever since the Khar'shan raid the brass has had me all over everywhere. Same for you, from what I've heard." She sent a look at the insignia on his shoulder and flashed him a salute with a smile. "Looks like you've done well for yourself, Lieutenant-Commander, sir." She glanced at the robot beside him. "You too Rex."

Shepard returned her grin easily as the dog barked a greeting. "Damn, I was not expecting to see you here. It's a nice surprise though."

She walked up and pet the dog as she responded. "Same. I was expecting to have to break in my new CO. Good to see that won't be necessary."

"No, I still remember most of your tricks," he replied easily. "Anyway," he redirected the conversation by hefting the mess of webbing. "Why do I need to be careful with this?"

"Because it hasn't even been properly field-tested yet," she replied. "It's a 'Type-I Mass Effect' Titan module. Lets you manipulate your own mass on the fly."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "Seriously?" he asked, surprised. The utter simplicity of the idea hit him like a slap in the face. "Wow, how did it take us this long to think of that?"

"Mostly because it costs more than most aircars," she answered. Shepard whistled. "That mesh is packed full of eezo nodes, and has enough elerium to power all of it. It can make a fully armored human weigh as little as 15 pounds, or as much as two tons."

Shepard grinned. "Oh man, the Sarge would have loved this..." he trailed off, remembering their old Sergeant who had fallen on Khar'shan. Lauren nodded.

"That he would," she agreed softly. She shook her head, shedding the memories. "Come with me. It's time you met the rest of the team."

"Lead the way," he said, waving her ahead of him. Lauren led the way out of the armory and through the Engineering deck, dodging the technicians and engineers running around performing final checks and last-minute corrections. A few minutes later, they arrived in the cargo bay. Both of the _Normandy_'s ground combat drones sat quietly within, and from the ceiling hung the three _Tornado_-class fighter drones. Lauren ignored all of it however, turning and briskly moving to a door recessed into the side of the bay. She pulled up outside and waited impatiently for Shepard and Rex to stand beside her.

"This is our ready room," she said. "We're here so we can load up in the TIV or on the HWP and be wherever we need to be in a matter of minutes."

"This isn't my first rodeo, Lauren," he reminded her, mildly annoyed that she seemed to think he was still the wet behind the ears rookie he'd been the last time they met. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed about it.

"Right, sorry." She gave him an apologetic look and he shrugged the annoyance aside. He wasn't petty enough to stay bothered by it, and it was time to meet the team. He smiled at her to let her know all was well. "You ready?"

"Let's do it," he said as he opened the door and stepped inside. Four soldiers, three men and one woman, sat around playing an old card game. All four of them had turned to face the door as soon as it opened, standing up as they recognized his rank insignia. Rex settled down behind and to his left, while Lauren stepped up and started the introductions.

"Everybody, this is Commander John Shepard, our new CO," she announced. "I served with him on Khar'shan." She turned to him and pointed at the woman. "Commander, this is Kathryn Warren."

"The name's Kat," she said with a glare at Lauren. She turned back to Shepard and smiled bubbly. "I'm an I-8 sniper, nice ta meetcha."

Shepard returned the greeting as Lauren pointed at the first man, a large, well built black man that towered over the entire room. "Lieutenant Abeni Tcha, second in command of the squad," she said, and Tcha met Shepard's gaze steadily.

"Pleasure, Commander," he rumbled, though the effect was somewhat lessened by the light tenor of his voice. "I am the heavy weapons expert for this team," he announced. "I am also a D-4 psionic." Shepard nodded at him, pleased to have another d-psi on the team. He may even have some tricks Shepard hadn't learned yet, that'd be nice.

Lauren's voice cut into his thoughts as she pointed at the next man, a young Caucasian of roughly the same height and build as Shepard. "Richard Jenkins," she announced. Shepard almost frowned. What the hell was a FNG doing here? This kid couldn't be much older than Shepard was for the Khar'shan insertion.

"It's an honor to work with you Commander," the kid almost gushed. He continued enthusiastically, "I'm the team's assault. No psionics though." He scowled briefly before grinning. "I'm really glad to be part of your team. I've read up on your career. To think, I get to serve under the Carnifex of Khar's-" Rex barked loudly, cutting the kid off. He sent a confused look at the robot, turned back to Shepard and went _white_.

"Do yourself a favor kid," he bit out carefully, struggling to keep his tone neutral. He was furious with the kid for worshipping that fucked up title. He felt a surge of psionic energy and nearly panicked. Long hours of training took over instinctively and slowly forced his powers back under his complete control. "Never say that again. That goes for the rest of you as well," he said, sweeping his gaze across the suddenly very subdued room. His piercing stare finally settled on Jenkins. "Khar'shan was a fucking disaster. I lost control and killed thousands of people that day. And a lot of them were innocent civvies that just happened to be in the wrong place. That title is not an accolade. Remember that."

"Y-you got it C-Commander," Jenkins stuttered out and snapped to attention. When Shepard's gaze finally left him, he visibly sagged in place. "God that was terrifying," he whispered, just barely within Shepard's hearing.

Shepard frowned, anger turning inward. Great first impression, genius. He shook his head, and spoke. "Look..." he started uncertain how to extend the olive branch. "I'm sorry, Khar'shan's just a touchy subject."

"It's alright Commander," Jenkins said, clearly grateful for the reprieve. "I should have guessed as much."

A mildly awkward silence settled over the group until Lauren coughed and introduced the last member of the squad, a tan, slim man with dark hair and the ever-so-slightly-unnatural charisma of a c-psi. "And the last member of the team is Kaidan Alenko."

"Nice to meet you Commander," he said smoothly, almost as if the last minute hadn't happened. "I'm a C-6 support. Looking forward to working with you."

"Same," Shepard responded, He turned away from the man to face the room in general. "To all of you. Even Jenkins." That got smiles from the women at least. "Orders permitting, we'll start some combat sims at 0700 tomorrow. Meet me at the range behind the armory," he ordered. When they acknowledged it, he turned and left, Rex trailing in his wake.

* * *

Shepard had just entered the elevator when EDI's voice rang out. "Commander, the Captain requests you report to his quarters immediately. You may reach it through the elevator."

Shepard nodded, only partially sure the AI couldn't see him. "Thanks EDI," he said, slapping the button for the crew deck. Turning to Rex, he said, "Go ahead and look around, but keep out of trouble. I'll come find you later." The dog yipped and slipped out of the elevator as it opened to the crew deck. Shepard hummed thoughtfully as the doors closed and the elevator ascended to the captain's quarters at the top of the ship. He wondered idly what the captain had called him for. Most likely it was deployment orders, but he held out some vague hope for a surprise.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid smoothly open with a hiss, disgorging Shepard a meter away from the captain's quarters. He walked to the door and rapped lightly, swinging it open when he was told to enter. He stepped into the spartan room, only slightly larger than his own. Shepard cast his gaze around the neatly organized room, noting the bed directly across from the door and the papers littering the desk against the wall to his right. His eyes locked onto the middle aged man who was in the process of standing from the desk's chair, and he tightened his stance into attention. "Captain David Anderson," he saluted and the captain returned it. "Your reputation precedes you."

"Same to you Commander." The captain smiled and extended his hand, which Shepard grasped firmly. "I'm looking forward to working with you."

"Me too," Shepard replied. "It's an honor to meet you, sir." Anderson waved it off. "No, really. I was on Mindoir when it was hit." Anderson's features softened slightly. "You brought back a few friends of mine."

"Just doing my job," Anderson said, his smooth, low voice hung in the air. His voice turned melancholy. "Wish I could have done more." He visibly shook off the feelings and memories and changed the subject. "Anyway, I wanted to meet you and go over our first mission on the _Normandy_."

"We've got a mission already?" Shepard asked, surprised. It was rare to dispatch a vessel so soon after its creation. There was a lot that could potentially go wrong in the first few weeks, and he wasn't looking forward to being cut off from support when Murphy caught up with them.

"Relax Commander," the captain said, sensing his anxiety. "This will be a milk run." Shepard gave him a questioning glance and he continued. "Three weeks ago, some farmers on Eden Prime discovered a Prothean relic." He tapped a series of commands on his omnitool and the wall over the desk morphed into an image of a green-grey, semi-cylindrical obelisk rising out of a triangular base. "Two weeks ago, we informed the Citadel Council of its presence. They went a little crazy about it," he said ruefully.

"Why?" Shepard asked. "It's just another Prothean statue, as far as I can tell."

"I thought so too at first," Anderson admitted. "Turns out it's a 'beacon' though."

"Beacon?"

"Some kind of data repository," Anderson said. "Nobody knows of what though. Our boys have been poking at it since we found it, but we can't get anything we can make sense of out of it. Best we've managed so far is to get it to glow varying shades of green. We're hoping the Citadel coats can shed some light on it."

"Interesting," Shepard mused idly. "But what does that have to do with us?"

"Our orders are to provide discrete security while the Citadel team is in the system. It should be an easy job, and it will give us a perfect opportunity to test the Wraith system against Citadel scanners."

Shepard grimaced slightly. Testing military cloaking technology against a civilian scientific expedition felt like the worst kind of ridiculous overkill, but it was a hell of a lot safer than testing it in the Terminus, and the risk of detection was much lower. It was worth trying at least. "Sounds like a plan," he said simply. "We'll have to try and bait a response out of them though."

"That's the plan," Anderson agreed. "We'll be simulating combat conditions around the Citadel ships and watching how they respond. If everything goes to plan they won't even notice us." Shepard nodded his agreement. "We leave in three hours. Dismissed."

Shepard saluted and left the room, heading back down to the crew deck. This assignment was shaping up to be pretty easy, he thought. Maybe he could treat it as a bit of a vacation, for a little while at least.

* * *

The three hours until launch passed fairly quickly for Shepard. He found a trio of junior officers in the lounge trying to play a card game he'd never heard of before, something one of them picked up from a Turian called Skyllian Five. He chatted idly with them, introducing himself and getting a read on them before moving off to check the rest of the ship. He wandered around, taking some time to talk to the people he passed and get a feel for the crew. It seemed like a pretty tight operation, so far at least.

Finally, his omnitool gave him the fifteen minute warning for the ships launch and he decided to head to the cockpit. He'd never seen a ship launch from the pilot's seat and he figured that if he stayed out of the way it would be alright to watch.

Nodding to himself, he sat off for the cockpit, arriving a couple minutes later to EDI explaining the pre-flight process to an attentive Rex as Joker went through it. "Hello, Commander," EDI said as he walked up. Rex barked a greeting. "Do you wish to observe the launch?"

"If that's alright," he said, throwing a questioning glance at Joker.

"'Salright," Joker said flippantly, motioning to the co-pilot's chair before going back to his task. "Take a seat. Ernie's on night duty unless we get into a fight. He won't mind."

"Thanks," Shepard muttered as he sat down, idly listening to EDI as she resumed explaining the pre-flight requirements to Rex, somehow correctly deciphering his various yips and growls.

Less than ten minutes passed and Joker wrapped it all up with a call to Captain Anderson. "We're green to go, Captain. Just say the word."

"Ready when you are, Joker. Take us out of here."

"Aye aye, sir." Joker's hands landed on the holographic controls and with a few deft motions the ship began to slide backwards. Shepard lurched in his seat from the acceleration, drawing Joker's attention. "Sorry about that," he apologized. "I keep the inertial compensator way low. Gives me a better feel for the ship."

"It's alright," Shepard muttered, too thankful the controls were holographic to be upset. That would have hurt otherwise. "At least I know now." He grumbled for a bit longer and braced himself for future maneuvers, but made sure to keep his eyes glued to the forward windows. He wouldn't miss this for the world.

A moment later, the _Normandy_ finally left her dock and swung around. The brilliant blackness of space filled his vision, stars twinkling all across the dark backdrop. The Normandy kept turning, dragging the distant arms of the Milky Way into view in a stunning silvery stream. Shepard sucked in a breath. "Beautiful, aint it?" Joker said quietly. Shepard could only nod. "I never get tired of that."

The nose of the ship slowly swung around, the key-like shape of the Arcturus warpgate sliding into view. The _Normandy_ shot forward with a jolt, heading straight for the fifteen kilometer long structure. The distance closed rapidly, and as they drew within a thousand kilometers, EDI spoke. "Arcturus Gate has been notified of our destination and is awaiting our portal."

"Roger that," Joker said, tapping a sequence into his controls. A comm window sprung up towards the end of the sequence showing the _Normandy_'s wormhole generator, where the first of two three-man wormhole teams was already in place. "We are good to go, get us a portal when you're ready."

The t-psis acknowledged the order and the window closed. A heartbeat later, a swirl of purple light bubbled out of the aether less than a kilometer from the _Normandy_'s nose. The gate surged to life in the left corner of the window, the brilliant blue of mass effect fields mixing with the purple flare of psionics to snag Shepard's attention. A soft purple flare shot down the length of the gate structure and disappeared into the distance, carrying the other end of their wormhole out to the fringe worlds. Then the proto-portal at the _Normandy_'s nose solidified before his eyes, tearing open a path to the Attican Traverse.

Rex barked happily at the sight, walking up and sitting beside Shepard's chair. Shepard found himself agreeing with the dog. That was a majestic sight. He reached out of the chair and rested a hand on Rex's head. The ship shot through the portal and they were abruptly thousands of lightyears away.

A blaring alert rang out almost immediately upon their arrival, and EDI's hologram flashed red. "We are receiving a distress call from Eden Prime," she said without fanfare. "They are under attack by an unknown enemy."


	9. Incursion

**Chapter 8: Incursion**

"Prepare the flotilla," Saren Arterius ordered the robot standing beside him as he studied the holographic displays littering the command center of his ship. Each displayed a different piece of the Citadel's data on the human colony of Eden Prime. "I will be retrieving the beacon. It is your responsibility to ensure the humans are too busy to notice."

"It will be done, Prophet," the platform said tonelessly and it went absolutely, unnaturally still. Saren took advantage of the silence to pore over his plan again, searching for flaws. The Citadel's reports on the colony's defenses were quite thorough, but he could not help but wish they could get real time updates. Alas, human sensors were far too powerful for even Sovereign to perform such a feat; any probes would be detected lightyears away from their nearest sensor range. Surprise was on their side however, and that counted for much in battle.

He eyed the local sensor display, taking note of the Geth ships ranging in size from frigates all the way up to dreadnoughts as they floated idly around the secondary relay Sovereign had directed them to, their door directly into Eden Prime's system. It was a massive fleet, an order of magnitude larger than Eden Prime's defensive garrison was reported to be and more than enough to match the supercarrier sure to be nearby. In any other situation, the assembled force would have struck fear into his heart. At this point however, the sight could only give him hope. These ships, these synthetics, would be fighting for the very survival of organic life. He found the irony rather amusing.

Shrugging off the brief moment of levity, he turned to his second, the asari Matriach Benezia. "Do you have any input on this operation?"

"It is a sound plan," she said calmly. "Disguising the theft of the beacon as a Geth attack will send the humans charging beyond the Perseus Veil while we work to find the Conduit. They will not expect our true intentions until it is far too late."

"No, they won't," Saren agreed. The plan was sound. It had to be. This beacon was the first clue to the location of the Conduit in over fifteen years. Sovereign was growing impatient, becoming increasingly demanding. Only the day before he had spoken of terminating their partnership. That could not be allowed. That partnership was the only thing that could hope to prevent the total extinction of every space-faring species in the galaxy.

Sighing heavily, he felt doubt begin to gnaw at the certainty of his course. Maybe he should share what he knew with the humans. Surely they of all people would be able to recognize the necessity of his actions. Sometimes the few must be sacrificed for the many. The galaxy could not stand against what was coming. The Conduit was their only hope. If he phrased it carefully, he could almost certainly convince the humans to aid his search.

A low rumble from deep in the ship behind him broke Saren from his musings, and reminded him of what was at stake. No, of course the humans wouldn't listen. The xenophobic pyjaks would just start flinging feces everywhere. It was unfortunate, but this colony's death would pave the way for the entire galaxy's salvation. He bowed his head slightly, murmuring faint prayers for the soon to be deceased. Turning to the platform beside him, he commanded, "Start the attack, leave no survivors."

* * *

Captain Anderson intently studied the tactical data sent from the Eden Prime garrison with a thunderous scowl. It was not good. An enemy fleet matching no known descriptions burst from the supposedly inactive Mass Relay and were in orbit above the planet before the defenders could do more than sound the alarm. The hostile force, consisting of, by Citadel designations, twenty frigates, twelve cruisers, six dreadnoughts, and a two kilometer super dreadnought, were utterly trouncing the beleaguered defenders. The super dreadnought alone, on his screen looking like nothing so much as a demented cuttlefish, was consuming the impotent attention of a full third of the defensive fighter screen.

The reports from the ground forces weren't any better. Scores of troop ships had descended on the colony and were in the process of routing the defenders completely. The worst part was that nothing but drones had been seen yet. The bastards didn't even have the decency to show up themselves. Their goal was clear at least, Anderson was thankful for that much. The enemies were all converging on the site of the Prothean find. He didn't know what they wanted with it, but they couldn't be allowed to have it.

The XCS _Bakker_, nearest of the four supercarriers assigned to the Fringe Worlds, was making best time for the battle, but it was still almost an hour away. There was no way their support would arrive in time. Thankfully, the _Normandy_ was made for missions just like this. It burned that he could not do more to assist the defenders, but they were just one ship. He could do far more good denying the enemy their objective.

He studied the enemy's force deployment for a long moment, carefully looking for weaknesses, some kind of hole in their formation the _Normandy_ could slip through. The portal itself was going to draw attention, no way around that, but if it was far enough away and they came through cloaked, it wouldn't matter. They only needed a few seconds to slip out of the bottleneck and disappear. Finally finding what he was searching for in low orbit of the planet, he cued the comm. "Take us in here Joker," he sent the pilot the coordinates. "Fast and quiet."

"Aye aye," came the reply, moments before the portal began to form.

A low crackle sounded throughout the bridge, heralding EDI's voice. "Wraith system engaged." Anderson nodded as the portal finished forming, the _Normandy_ slipping through in the same instant. "Warning," the AI said before they'd even fully emerged. "Enemy ships have fired on the portal. Collision in eight seconds"

The deck jerked slightly from the acceleration as Joker threw the ship forward, allowing the portal to slide closed behind them. The ship shot forward as tension mounted on the bridge. Every crewmember waiting with bated breath for the second volley. After a few seconds that stretched into eternity, EDI announced, "No enemy firing solutions. It would appear the Wraith system is a success."

Anderson could literally feel the tension seeping out of the bridge, and indulged in it no small amount himself. "Thank you, EDI," he said. "Good job." The AIs hologram projector beside his chair blinked on and the orb rolled slightly. Anderson was surprised to recognize it as a nod. He shrugged off the surprise quickly however, as Eden Prime loomed large in his displays. He opened a comm line to Commander Shepard, who had shot into the elevator like a bat out of hell as soon as the alert had sounded. He and his squad should be getting suited up now, if they hadn't finished already.

"Commander, is your squad ready?"

"As we'll ever be sir," came the instant reply. "What's going on?"

"Unknown hostiles have attacked Eden Prime, apparently for the beacon," he answered quickly. "And they're making a mess of things in the process. We don't have the means to stop them." Shepard made a noise of protest. Anderson didn't blame him, he wasn't happy about that either. "We're one ship son, they brought a fleet. Fact of the matter is, there's not much we can do to stop them. What we _can _do is make sure they did all this for nothing. You're being sent in to retrieve or destroy the Prothean beacon before they can get away with it."

Shepard's voice was cautious as he asked, "What about the civilians sir?"

Anderson closed his eyes tightly, hating himself a little bit more with every word he spoke. "Civilian rescue is a secondary priority."

Shepard's silence spoke volumes. Finally, the commander spoke. "I think I misheard you sir, say again?"

"Civilian safety is a secondary concern to stopping them from getting away with that beacon," he repeated with an internal curse. This shit just wasn't right, but someone had to be the bad guy here. Too many lives depended on it. "If whoever this is escapes with that beacon, who knows what they'll do with it. They want it enough to throw a _fleet_ at it. If they get away with that thing, it could mean the death of _every_ human civilian."

"Understood." Shepard's voice was tight, angry, and bitter, yet it held a note of resignation. He waited a beat before he bit out, "This is bullshit, sir."

Anderson winced internally, unable to disagree. "It is what it is," he responded, voice carefully neutral. "We don't have time to argue, Commander. Take your squad and get that beacon out of their hands. Whatever it takes. That's an order."

"Aye aye, sir," Shepard said bitterly, closing the connection. Anderson sagged in his chair. That sucked.

He blew out a breath, then called to Joker. "Get the ground team as close to the beacon site as you can, then start dealing with the landing craft. We are weapons free for this operation."

"You got it, sir," the pilot replied, sending the ship dipping into the atmosphere. "We'll make these bastards pay."

* * *

Shepard closed the comm and allowed himself to seethe for a moment. Putting innocent lives as a secondary concern violated every principle he held dear, violated every oath he'd sworn to himself after Khar'shan, but he couldn't refuse his orders. Ultimately, Anderson was right. If these alien bastards got away with the beacon, there was no telling what havoc they'd wreak, how many people they'd kill. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the anger go. Going in angry would only get his squad killed. After a few deep breaths, he opened his eyes and turned to his squad. "Get your gear ready," he said. "We need to be ready to deploy five minutes ago."

The troops turned to pulling on their Titan Armor and Shepard quickly joined them. The synthetic muscles of the base suit slid on easily, the familiar feeling of superhuman strength swiftly infusing his limbs. He shifted slightly to settle the Archangel pack on his back, automatically checking that his psionic amp and grappling hook were up and running. He started slightly when he couldn't find the grapple, but after a brief moment of panic he remembered swapping it for a mass effect module. He had intended to test it out in combat sims the next morning, but it was far too late to change it back now. It'd be getting one hell of a test today at least.

He finished suiting up less than a minute later and swung up his plasma sniper, attaching it to the magnetic clamp on the back of his armor. He double-checked all of his equipment, then turned to the rest of his squad, who were done or just finishing their own combat prep. The team filed out of the ready room and into the cargo hold, forming into a line before the ground drones. Rex took the opportunity to join them, sitting down at the end of the line. Shepard stepped out in front of them and turned back to face them.

Faceless helmets topped each individual, the rather plain appearance of wide, opaque visors embedded in rounded armor plates serving greatly to disguise just how advanced they were. Datalinks connected each and every member of the squad to every other, providing real-time updates on their comrades' location and condition, and the VIs inside allowed for rapid target-sharing and acquisition. Under the helmet, black synthetic muscle flowed over their forms, disappearing under some combination of armor and attached modules. The sheer variety in equipment selection, the entire point of the revamped Titan Armor Modular System, ensured no two members of the squad looked exactly the same. From the massive form of Lieutenant Tcha, made all the more imposing by the shoulder-mounted missile racks and the blaster launcher strapped to his back, to Warren's diminutive stature, the team ran the gauntlet.

Shepard snorted quietly. Good thing appearances counted for fuck all in combat. "Listen up," he said, inwardly delighting in how none of them had to so much as twitch to stand at attention. "Three weeks ago, a Prothean relic was found on Eden Prime. Today, some extraterrestrial jackasses came to take it. We're not going to let them." A low murmur of approval came from the squad, strongest from Jenkins. "Our orders are to retrieve or, if that's not possible, destroy that relic. We're going in fast and hot, against an unknown number of enemy hostiles with unknown capabilities. Keep your eyes sharp and trigger fingers ready, but remember this is a human colony. There's going to be civilians running around. Watch your firing lanes and minimize collateral damage where possible." He paused, eying his squad. "Any questions?"

"No sir," the unit replied as one.

"Good, hop on Bane and strap in," he said, pointing at the HWP as he said its codename. The oblong vehicle lifted slightly off the ground as the Heavy Weapon Platform's antigrav came to life. Its pulse cannon, the design lifted almost directly from the Ethereal's Sectopods, whined slightly as it started to charge. "Intel is non-existent on this one, so we're gonna make sure we have enough gun."

The squad shot over to the drone tank, the smaller members slipping inside its cramped interior while Tcha and Rex strapped themselves in beside its missile racks. Jenkins hesitated before the commander, clearly torn about something. "You need something, Jenkins?" Shepard asked.

"Err, Commander," he started cautiously. "I... I grew up on Eden Prime. Let me take point, please." Shepard locked gazes with his visor and waited for the man to continue. "I know the land, I can get us to the beacon. I gotta, I gotta be doing something. Let me have the first crack at these things, _please_."

Shepard remained silent for a long moment, then said, "I know what you're going through Jenkins. Control it or you'll get yourself and, unless you're very lucky, the rest of us killed." He laid a hand on Jenkins shoulder. "It gets in your head, believe me I know, but you're not going to help anyone charging in blind, and the last thing I want to do is have to tell your family you got yourself killed. Don't make me do that."

Jenkins sputtered for a moment and sagged in Shepard's grip. "Yeah, yeah," he said weakly. "You're right. Gotta get my game face on." He straightened and nodded at the commander, clearly still troubled and just as clearly trying to hide it. "Thanks, Commander. You... thank you."

"Get on Bane already," Shepard said with a friendly shove, pushing the soldier towards the drone and following behind him. Shepard climbed up and attached himself to one of the tank's external anchor points next to its main gun, Jenkins grabbing hold directly opposite him. The squad settled into place, waiting for the _Normandy_ to reach their insertion point.

An anxious few minutes passed before Joker's voice intruded on his thoughts. "Commander, the closest LZ we can find is two clicks from the beacon site. The alien presence is too heavy to get any closer. You're dropping in ten."

Shepard clicked his comm in acknowledgement and turned to his squad. "Drop in ten, brace yourselves." The squad tensed, those outside tightening their grips on the tank beneath them. A brief wait later, the _Normandy_'s cargo door swung open and the drone shot out into the atmosphere a kilometer above the ground with a mighty roar.

The drone fell like a rock, wind whipping around the tank, pulling sharply at the external squad members. Shepard activated his mass effect module, instantly quadrupling his weight and drastically reducing the pull of the wind. He distantly noticed the extra artificial muscles on Jenkins and Tcha flexing powerfully to assist their harnesses in keeping them attached and Rex's jaw clamping on the nearest handle to the dog. The tank's antigrav burst to life then, slowing their descent until they came to a halt feet from the ground.

The squad disembarked in a rush, finding themselves in an empty clearing surrounded by sharp rocks. A waypoint came into being on their HUDs as EDI's voice came over their speakers. "Ground team, your objective is currently one point five three kilometers due east. Proceed with caution."

"Roger EDI," Shepard replied as he examined the boundaries of the clearing they had found. He pointed out the route closest to straight towards their destination. "That way," he said clearly. "Tcha, you and Rex take point. Eyes peeled people." With that, the humans vanished into the rocks, Bane trailing slightly behind.

The XCOM squad advanced quickly but carefully down their chosen path, swiftly closing the distance to the beacon. Roughly half a kilometer out from the dig site, the path smoothly entered a wide valley between a pair of steep, rocky hills. If it were any deeper, Shepard would have been tempted to call it a canyon. "I don't like the look of this," he said to the squad. "Jenkins, there a way around nearby?"

"Not for over a mile sir."

"Fuck," Shepard said matter-of-factly. "Alright, Tcha and Rex are on point, Jenkins and Bane watch their backs. Alenko and Kadderal keep an eye on the ledges. Me and Warren are on overwatch." A chorus of acknowledgements rang out and the troops adjusted their formation. Shepard allowed the tank to overtake him and followed the advance from the rear, eyes darting everywhere.

A tense minute passed as they made their way through the rocks, climbing over and around rocks, fallen trees and other detritus in the wide valley. Then the quiet was shattered by Tcha's shout of warning. "Incoming hostiles!"

The humans threw themselves into the nearest cover, which for Shepard and Warren happened to be the HWP. Targeting data came in from his squad, highlighting all of the enemies they could see. Atop the left hill, a tree had fallen into the path, its tip buried in the dirt and its roots twisted and branching into the sky. A single enemy robot had taken position behind the root system, assault rifle extending through a small opening between the roots allowing it to fire at will while keeping itself safe. A second alien stood on a knoll a few meters past, and above, the tree, and was firing on the lead elements of the human squad. To the right, a pair of the aliens took cover behind a rocky outcropping thrust up from the canyon beneath it and in the middle, another six aliens were scattered behind rocks and trees and were busy raining fire on the humans.

"Back left!" Shepard called, flagging the alien on the knoll as his target. At almost the same instant, Warren called the alien in the roots. He dialed his sights in on the robot, absently noting that the flashlight on its face made for an _excellent_ target, and let fly with a double dose of plasmic death. The alien's shields flared and died in a shower of sparks before the second shot disintegrated everything above its chest and it collapsed. Warren's target fared slightly better, her first shot only destroying its cover and sending the rest of the tree sliding further into the path. The alien tried to scramble to new cover, but Warren's second shot drilled it between the shoulder blades, frying its shields and scorching its armor. Kadderal seized the initiative and finished it off at almost the same instant.

Shepard's attention then turned to the aliens directly ahead of their path, briefly taking note of Jenkins and Tcha hiding behind a large rock a few meters from the fallen tree and Rex crouching under an outcropping along the right wall. Without warning, Bane opened fire. The pulse cannon roared, pumping out a two foot wide beam that passed inches above the fallen tree and instantly sending it up in a fiery conflagration. The beam continued on and struck a small boulder sheltering a pair of alien troops and the boulder exploded, killing the two that had been hiding behind it. Fist sized pieces of stone filled the air, raining down on the surrounding aliens.

Before the aliens could recover, Jenkins threw himself out of cover and up and over the burning log. Bullets, and pieces of the boulder, rained on his upraised riot shield as he moved. His alloy cannon roared as soon as he hit the ground on the far side, and the targeting outline of one of the two live aliens behind the tree went dim to signify its death.

To Shepard's right, Alenko opened fire on the pair of aliens up on the right ledge, forcing them to break off from Jenkins. At the same time Shepard saw plasma fire lance out from the far side of the tank, forcing the alien now far too close to Jenkins to scramble back away from the burning tree.

The aliens had finally started to recover when Rex burst out of cover and sent a small salvo of titan missiles raining on the last uncompromised ground-level alien position, utterly destroying the wide tree stump they hid behind and sending the pair scrambling out of cover to get away from the destruction.

Shepard quickly activated his mass effect module and his Archangel pack, catapulting him into the air at a dizzying speed. With a focused thought, the two atop the bluff were slammed together, armor snapping with an audible crack as they were compacted together. Then the misshapen ball of limbs and synthetic muscle was tossed at one of the two Rex had flushed out.

The impromptu missile collided with its target the instant before Rex reached it, taking it to the ground. The dog jumped over the deformed lump and landed on the far side of the robot Jaws made of solid Vahlenite with a bite strength measured in tons flashed out and crushed the alien's head. The body continued to fight, however, until Rex literally tore its chest apart and pulled out a solid lump of electronics in a spray of white. The second alien tried to attack the dog, but Tcha's heavy plasma roared and utterly destroyed it in a shower of brilliant green.

Shepard then shot through the air, moving to get a vantage on the last remaining alien, but Jenkins beat him to it. The rookie charged the thing with a roar, assault rifle fire bouncing off his raised riot shield. Jenkins made it halfway across the distance before the shield's barrier failed in a shower of sparks, but he paid it no mind. The brilliant spark of ricochets flew off his heavily armored form until he barreled bodily into his target. It would have gone flying, but the man grabbed its leg before it could escape his reach. With a furious roar, he spun and slammed it into the ground, the impact throwing clouds of dust into the air. Combined from the smoke from the burning tree, Shepard couldn't see what happened next, but when it cleared a few moments of grunting and high pitched chittering later, the alien lay in several pieces and white fluid liberally painted Jenkins' front.

Shepard cast a last look around the valley and couldn't detect any more hostiles, so he quickly landed before the heavily panting rookie. "You alright there, Jenkins?"

"Never better sir," he answered, almost happily. "Just had to work off some frustration."

"Good. Now don't let it happen again," Shepard said reproachfully. Jenkins started slightly, so Shepard elaborated. "We're blind down here. I told you before we deployed, that kind of gung-ho shit is going to get someone killed, probably you." Jenkins slumped in place, and kept getting lower with each word. Shepard smiled wryly beneath his helmet. Jenkins really was reminding him more and more of himself ten years ago. "Still, at least you waited for the last one. Keep yourself under control and we won't need an official reprimand."

Jenkins nodded tightly with a relieved, "Thank you, sir."

Shepard returned the nod then keyed his comm to the rest of the squad. "Status?"

Some variation on "we're good" came back quickly and the troops regrouped around Shepard and Jenkins. When they arrived, there was much unabashed staring that alternated between Jenkins and the ruined remains of the last alien. Shepard amusedly noted that none of them had expected something like that from the excitable rookie. Rex walked up to the focus of attention, looked him up and down, then turned his back, casting a pointed glance at the noticeably more intact remains of his own victim, with a thoroughly insulted chuff.

The slowly creeping tension evaporated instantly and Lauren said cheerfully, "Nice going, Jenkins. You showed up the dog." She ran a hand through the white fluid coating his armor. "But next time, you might want to keep it in your pants." A muted laugh came from the squad as Jenkins stuttered embarrassedly.

"Alright, alright," Shepard broke in, grabbing their attention. "We've still got a job to do. Let's get to it." They nodded and began heading towards the beacon once again.

* * *

The last half-kilometer to the dig site passed uneventfully. The lack of enemies didn't sit right with Shepard; he couldn't shake the feeling that it meant something big was coming. Surely if they were after the beacon, there would be more of the things around it, wouldn't there? It wasn't like they hadn't landed enough.

The dig site coming into view a moment later brought him out of his thoughts. The hill to the left side of the path they had been following had been carved out to reveal the Prothean site. A circular metal pad marked by concentric ridges in three rows around it extended two-thirds of its width out of the sheer rock face created by the excavation. Metal obelisks of varying heights ringed the visible portion of the circle. Two of the obelisks, eight foot tall blocks the width of a man, rose from the edges at 90 degree angles along the circle. Assuming symmetry, two more similar blocks were buried further in the dug out hill. Another three obelisks, three feet tall and almost six wide, stood along a line a meter further out from the center of the circle. These three were placed at 45 degree angles off from the taller monuments, with one out in the open and two still partially buried in the ten foot tall rock face. Also in the cleared area was an excavator, presumably the same device responsible for digging out the hill, and a squat prefab building that likely housed some equipment for experimenting with the beacon. All in all, it looked like a pretty standard dig site.

The one thing that stood out in its absence however, and sent Shepard into an internal rant that would have made a sailor blush, was the Prothean beacon. The geth must have taken it already. "Damnit," he said aloud, echoing the sentiments being expressed by his squad. Quickly channeling his frustration into a productive form, he started barking orders. "Alright, spread out and search this place. There has to be clues to where they took it. Rex and Tcha, check the platform. Jenkins and Kadderal check the building, see if it has any cameras that caught anything. Everyone else keep an eye out for hostiles. Be careful folks, there's no telling what kind of surprises they left behind for us."

The squad acknowledged his orders and started to move to fulfill it. Rex and Tcha started carefully examining the circle while Jenkins and Kadderal made their way toward the building. They'd barely made it halfway when an unholy roar filled the air. The ground erupted under Shepard's feet, bodily throwing him into the wall of the excavation where he tumbled into the dirt. From where he lay, he had a clear view of the upended, burning wreckage of what had once been a HWP and Warren crushed underneath it. "Fuck!" he barked. "TK field going up!" And he suited actions to words, creating chaotically swirling patterns of force over the field of battle to misdirect enemy fire and give his team a chance to recover. He took the slight breather to survey the hostiles.

On the far side of the circle from him, a pair of aliens were dueling with Rex and Jenkins. Another group of at least three was firing on the squad from within the research building, and both the building and the excavator had one on top carrying a rocket launcher. Judging by Alenko and Kadderal's fire, even more were on the bluff above the dig site.

Fuck this shit, Shepard thought furiously. "Tcha! Take out that building!" he barked. The alien atop the excavator turned its weapon on Shepard, but before it could fire he flexed his mind and a purple spear lanced its side, catapulting it into the building hard enough to force it through the thin metal wall. An instant later, the team's heavy unleashed a ball of angry green death from his blaster launcher straight through the hole Shepard had made. The bomb detonated a heartbeat later, turning all five barriers of the building into a wave of deadly shrapnel. The alien on the roof was shredded instantly, pieces of it carried by the shockwave to rain down over the entire area. The aliens inside fared even worse; the biggest piece left was the size of a man's fist.

Shepard threw himself to his feet and called out, "I've got the top, cover me!" Kadderal and Alenko's fire re-doubled, hopefully forcing the aliens back into cover. At the same time, Shepard lightened himself and flew high into the air with his Archangel pack. Atop the bluff, two rocket wielding robots were covering behind large trees while a boulder in between sheltered two others with lighter weapons. Nearly the same instant he cleared the top of the rise, he was forced to dodge a pair of rockets with a telekinetic push on himself, throwing his body up and over their trajectory.

"Ow," he grumbled quietly. "I'm gonna feel that one tomorrow." The aliens didn't give him the courtesy of letting him recover though, and he was forced to duck and weave constantly, despite the plasma raining on their position from his squad. He didn't need to be exposed for long though, and with a fierce scowl of concentration, the telekinetic field he had deployed earlier was suddenly moved then concentrated in both area of effect and power, forming a full-blown rift.

Psionic light swirled in chaotic patterns, forming a vortex of ripping and tearing power. The aliens, their cover, even the earth itself was quickly torn asunder and pieces flung through the air. The high pitched chittering the aliens used to communicate filled the air, and he thought he heard panic in their cries. Pieces were sheared off the aliens one at a time as they were battered by the debris carried in the psionic storm. White fluid filled the air, mixing with the dust kicked up by his efforts and forming a thick, viscous sludge that coated everything within. He kept the storm going for only a few seconds, but when he relaxed his hold, the resulting crater held a soupy mixture of debris and alien pieces, none larger than a shoebox.

Shepard turned back to the rest of his squad just in time to see Rex and Jenkins finishing their enemies. The squad called in the all clear as they finished up and the adrenaline quickly drained out of his system, leaving a mild version of the strange mental weariness of psionic overuse in its wake. "Looks clear from up here too," he said tiredly. "Status?"

"Lost my Archangel sir," Kadderal's voice came back. "Shrapnel from the explosion."

Everyone else reported mostly intact, so Shepard called down, "Good. How is..." He trailed off as he realized that answer was obvious. Warren couldn't have survived that. "Tcha and Jenkins, flip Bane over and get Warren out from under it. If you can, put her inside. Her body'll be safe enough there until we can come back for her."

"On it," Tcha said as they set to their task. Shepard then brought himself to a landing and staggered from a sudden bout of dizziness. Yea, he had overdone it with the rift.

Lauren rushed up and helped steady him. "You alright sir?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Just give me a minute." He distantly noticed the loud thump of the HWP getting flipped back over. Forcing his thoughts into order with an act of will, he said aloud, "Bane, you still in there?" The tank remained silent, but an outline of the vehicle, including a damage report, appeared on his HUD a second later. Shepard studied it briefly and sighed. The gravity drive and most of its weapons were scrap. Still, there was one thing it could still do. "Pop the top, Bane." The hatch slid open smoothly and Tcha gently placed Warren's body into a seat within. The big man climbed back out and it slid closed. "Keep her safe for me."

Turning to his squad, he then said, "Let's keep moving. I saw a couple more prefabs further down the trail. I think that's the primary research center. We'll head there and see if we can find anything." A chorus of affirmatives came over the comm and the squad moved out.

* * *

Fortunately, the research outpost was close to the dig site, only a hundred meters or so further down the trail. It consisted of a trio of prefabricated buildings surrounded by a wide variety of equipment; most of it ridiculously expensive and in an equally ridiculous number of very small pieces. Shepard would have felt somewhat put out by that if his attention hadn't been firmly snared by the other equipment, and the... people, he supposed they should be called, around it.

Over a dozen meter-tall tripods stood scattered around the buildings, each bearing a vicious looking point that rose a few inches from the top. Another ten or so things shared a similar base, but the point was extended into a spike over three meters tall with a human body impaled through the chest on each. Blood slowly oozed down the spikes, eventually joining what had to be gallons of the stuff mixed into the dirt.

The red mud had been churned into a thick, visibly congealing mess by what had the entire squad frozen in a horrified stupor. Fifteen things that had clearly once been human, and just as clearly no longer were, relentlessly pounded deformed fists against the walls and doors of one of the buildings, to little effect. Blue veins ran every which way over their grey skin and what little hair they had left was falling from them in clumps. Whatever the sectoid-fuckers had done to these people, they were little more than mindless shells.

As the shock wore off, Shepard's grip unconsciously tightened on his rifle. This was too far. The damned robots were going to pay. But first, he could at least give these people the rest they deserved. "Get ready," he told the squad. "We're going to put a stop to this. These people deserve a clean death at least." Muttered acknowledgements and faint prayers came back. "Remember your zombie training back in basic." Despite the situation, Shepard felt a wry grin tugging at his lips. Who'd have thought all that anti-chryssalid training would actually be useful? "Keep them at range and we'll be fine."

The squad spread out into the clearing, raised their weapons and rained fire on the shambling horde. Six of the husks died instantly. The rest whirled as one towards the humans and charged them. At the same time, the extended spikes shrank into their bases, the bodies they carried flopping to the ground. The formerly impaled humans then climbed to their feet and joined the husks charging the soldiers. Shepard scowled. These things weren't nearly as durable as chryssalid zombies, but almost four to one odds was not something he wanted to deal with.

Well, that's why he brought his omnitool. "Tech mine going out!" he said as he cued the device. A brilliant bolt of flame shot from the micro-fabricator and hit the center of the charge with an explosive roar. Burning thermite was thrown throughout the zombie horde, disintegrating several of them with a hiss. The zombies were so far gone they didn't make a sound throughout the entire process, even the ones that had survived and were now 'merely' missing limbs or pieces of their torso.

The survivors continued their blind charge at the soldiers, only to be mowed down in short order by XCOM's powerful plasma weaponry. Bodies fell in charred pieces into the mud, the sickening squelch enough to unsettle every member of the squad, until finally the last of the husks fell and calm settled on the clearing.

"What the hell were those things?" Jenkins asked, warily eying the tripods.

"At a guess, whoever's behind this saw some footage from Adek," Lauren said somewhat bitterly. "They're probably trying to return the favor." She shook her head. "I'm more interested in why they were trying to beat down that building."

"You think there's survivors in there?" Tcha asked.

"It'd make sense," Shepard answered. He turned to the building and raised his voice. "Ho the building! This is Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard of the XCS _Normandy_. If there are any survivors inside, please respond."

"Oh thank God!" A female voice replied, relief thick in her tone. "We're coming out, hold your fire."

The door to the small building slid open and a trio of humans stepped out, two women and a man. One of the women wore a rather battered suit of Titan Armor and the other two wore labcoats, likely researchers that were working on the beacon. As soon as they stepped outside, the sight, and stench, of the clearing hit them almost like a physical force. The female researcher turned aside and vomited heavily, her colleague helping to hold her up. The armored woman strode through the muck without comment, though she was making a visible effort to step lightly, until she stood right before Shepard.

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the Eden Prime Defense Force, Second Battalion," she rattled off. "You in charge here, sir?"

"I am now," Shepard replied. "What's your situation?"

He couldn't see her face to tell for sure, but judging by her body language, Williams was scowling rather fiercely. "Goddamn flashlight heads butchered my unit and trashed my plasma rifle." At this, she hefted the weapon she was holding, a rifle of some sort covered in smooth curves and unlike anything the human military had ever used. "I managed to snag one of theirs and get away from the worst of it though. I stumbled across the dig site not much later and managed to get those two," she pointed over her shoulder at the civilians. "Into hiding nearby. The aliens dragged the beacon past here about twenty minutes ago and I made to follow. That's when the zombies started popping off these things. I got the civvies inside and locked the door to keep them out. After that, well, you know the rest." She said the last with a defeated slump. "You had to ride in and save my ass."

"You did good Williams," Shepard said. "Don't beat yourself up." He paused for a moment to see the effects of his words. She seemed to ignore them so, with a mental shrug, he continued on. There wasn't time to be delicate. "Now, you said you saw the beacon? Which way did it go?"

"That way," she pointed further down the narrow valley. "The robots carried it while a turian stood around barking orders at them to get moving. Twenty minutes ago, tops."

"A turian?" Shepard asked surprised. The Coalition and the Hierarchy had had great diplomatic relations, if one ignored the contact incident. Why were they here? He forcibly stopped himself from wondering about it further. Now wasn't the time and he wasn't the person to figure that shit out, he just had to stop this attack. "Nevermind, it doesn't matter. Hold on a sec." And with that, he took to the air and started tracing the valley's path, looking for some clue to the beacon's whereabouts.

He got it in a big way not even thirty seconds later. The ravine emptied out only a couple kilometers from the dig site into a large open area, a slap-dash tram station on the far side presumably linked the clearing and the tens of kilometers distant city for access to the dig site. A large ship, vaguely reminiscent of an Earth wasp and at least half the size of the Normandy moved in and made to land on the nearer end of the field. Without a doubt, that's where the beacon was headed. "Ground team to Normandy."

"_Normandy_ here," EDI replied. "What do you need, Commander?"

"The aliens have taken the beacon," he announced without preamble. "I believe they are attempting to load it onto this vessel." He painted the vessel a priority target on his HUD and uploaded its data to EDI. "Requesting fire support."

He brought himself back down as he waited for EDI's reply. As he touched the ground, her voice came back on the wideband. "Attention all surviving XCOM personnel, fusion munition impacting at these coordinates in twenty two seconds. Evacuate the vicinity immediately."

Shepard threw himself against the edge of the ravine and hunkered down, idly noting the entirety of his squad, even Williams, doing the same, two of them pinning the civilians to the earth underneath them. He started counting the time, and part of him was amused to note that at exactly twenty two seconds, the universe went white.

The rest of him was more concerned with surviving the experience. The ground jumped and bucked wildly, even kilometers from the blast site, upending nearly everything around the research outpost and scattering the rest. The civilians started screaming uncontrollably, a high, piercing wail of terror that hit something primal in his brain. A long second later, the shockwave hit and he could hear no more. The ravine protected them from the worst of it, the heat and winds roaring past overhead, but the pressure differential it created sucked the air out of the valley and nearly pulled the squad up into it. The bloody mud was sucked up like there was an invisible vacuum in the sky, ensuring that everyone in the ravine was coated in the gunk. The storm bit and twisted at them all and lasted for only a moment, but to Shepard it felt like years.

Eventually though, it did come to an end and the squad shakily regained their feet. "Doctors, get back into hiding." The civilians nodded shakily and scampered into the building, completely ignoring the bloody muck still clinging to them. Shepard turned to Williams. "Chief, you're with us now. Stay frosty."

"Yes sir," she said emphatically, clearly rather enthused at the chance for payback, or maybe still riding the adrenaline high from the blast. Shepard couldn't tell.

To the rest of the squad, he said, "Something tells me this isn't going to end that easily. Let's go." The troops acknowledged his orders and took off further down the ravine, straight towards the heart of the devastation.

* * *

Ground zero for the _Normandy_'s main gun was an impressive sight, Shepard thought when the squad reached it several minutes later. The heat and winds had scoured the entire clearing, creating a field of brittle glass and charcoal nearly as far as the eye could see, which wasn't very far. Smoke, the last remnants of the mushroom cloud, hung thick in the air, reducing visibility to less than 50 meters. Judging by the debris pattern he could see though, little remained of the vessel save twisted shrapnel driven deep into the charred earth where it once stood. Pieces of it jutted from the ground in mute testament to the awesome power brought to bear against it.

There had been no sign of the beacon in the valley, so Shepard was beginning to feel fairly confident that the beacon had, in fact, gone down with the ship. They had to verify it though, so the squad carefully made their way across the scorched ground, carefully examining every piece of wreckage they came across, looking for anything that might be a piece of the beacon. Or even the thing itself. It was, after all, ancient precursor technology. If the vids had any truth to them, the stupid thing could probably tank a supernova. Shepard scowled. That was an encouraging thought.

Eventually, when the squad had stopped to examine another piece of alien wreckage, the soft crunch of footsteps continued unabated. The entire squad froze as Shepard barked quietly, "Alenko, what the hell's out there?"

A halo of purple light flared around the communication psionic's head, indicating the active use of his powers as he sought to read the ebb and flow of their surroundings. A tense moment passed until he spoke quietly. "Several robots, at least 20, about 100 meters to the east, heading north-northeast." He paused for a moment and the light flared. He must have been trying to get a better look. "I can't get a reading, but it appears they're heading for the tram station." He paused again, then spoke in a rush. "Commander! I- I think the beacon survived the explosion. It's at the station."

"Well, fuck," Shepard said matter of factly, cutting through the murmuring that pronouncement had created. "You sure?"

"No idea, Commander," he answered, ignoring the incredulous stares he got from nearly everyone present. "I've never sensed anything like this. What else could it be?"

"With my luck, you're probably right," Shepard admitted with a mild groan. Rex yipped a playful agreement in the background at the same time Lauren sighed and verbally agreed. "Alright, we're stopping the ones here before they can join up with the others then taking that fucking beacon back. Alenko, paint us some targets."

A few seconds later, targeting data came scrolling through Shepard's hud, wide swathes of ground being highlighted instead of individuals. Before he could ask, Alenko explained, "That's the best I can do, Commander. They're all robots, I can't get any better details."

Shepard scowled inside his helmet. It'd have to do. "Good enough. Jenkins, Kadderal, and Williams, try to get close enough to get us some better data. Alenko, stick with them and keep feeding us telemetry through the smoke. Rex and Tcha, with me. We're going to be the artillery." The approach team took off, carefully moving to intercept the alien robots. Shepard waved his pair to follow him, moving briskly at an angle to the other team's approach. When they'd opened a significant gap between the approach vectors, Shepard ordered his team to open fire.

Titan missiles shot from the dog and the heavy and came down on the alien formation, sending them into chaos. Shepard primed and launched a series of tech mines at the same time, adding thermite to the devastating rain. Explosions and the roar of burning metal filled the air and an instant later, telemetry data came in from the approach team, outlining eighteen alien forms through the smoke, another fourteen lying twisted and broken around them.

Shepard's ducked behind a piece of the alien ship as the column began returning fire. It was not terribly accurate but, he mused as one of the aliens fired a rocket that exploded only meters away from him, it didn't need to be to be deadly. Thankfully, the approach team decided to intervene then, tearing into the aliens with vicious force. Three of them, including the one with the rocket launcher, fell near instantly and the rest retreated into the smoke, vanishing like wraiths.

Alenko tried to keep positions updated, vague areas moving all over the squad's HUD, but it was a losing proposition from the get go. There were simply too many disparate aliens to track wholly accurately. The battle had become a game of cat and mouse, and Shepard was sure as hell not going to be the mouse. A quick series of gestures had Tcha and Rex moving alongside him as they hunted for the alien robots. They darted after Alenko's markers, weapons primed and ready.

In a matter of moments, they reached their first victim, a lone alien prowling through the smoke. Rex bolted forward, jaws opened wide. A surge of green light burst from his mouth and slammed into the alien with enough force to tear its torso from its hips. The alien torso hit the ground in a molten pile of slag and the legs collapsed, white fluid pumping steadily out. "One down," Shepard reported over the comm.

"Thanks," Alenko said curtly, his voice strained.

Kadderal took over then, "We've taken out two. Twelve left."

"Roger," Shepard replied and waved his team back to the hunt.

They prowled through the smoke, finding and swiftly dispatching two more without incident, when Alenko came over the comm, sounding exhausted. "I can't keep it up, you're on your own," he panted out. Shepard clicked the comm in acknowledgement and they continued, slowing to a crawl. Including the additional kill from Kadderal's team while they were hunting, there were still nine left somewhere in the smoke

After a tense few seconds, they stumbled on another alien. It immediately opened fire, sending Shepard and Tcha scrambling for cover. Rex darted forward, drawing the alien's fire and trusting in his kinetic barriers to protect him. From his position behind a particularly large remnant of the ship, Tcha brought his heavy plasma to bear and opened fire. Plasma lanced out with a roar and tore the alien apart in a storm of vengeful fury.

Without warning, a brilliant beam of solid light burst through the smoke and drilled through the heavy's helmet, exiting in a geyser of gore. "Holy shit!" Shepard shouted in surprise, reacting on instinct and throwing what was likely a futile tech mine towards the source. Tcha's body hit the ground with a solid thud as Shepard realized what had happened. "They're sharing telemetry!" he shouted into the comm. "They've got at least one sniper watching for it, and whatever they're using can tear through Titan Armor like its tissue paper! They took out Tcha!" Kadderal cursed vehemently and Shepard echoed the sentiment silently. "Alenko, get us intel damnit," he barked. "We need those snipers dead!"

"Y- yes sir," Alenko said wearily. A long pause followed as Shepard darted out of cover, constantly moving away from where the aliens had seen him last. Finally, two small areas were highlighted on his HUD. "Snipers there," he panted heavily as he spoke. "The rest, sp-spotters. I- I'm gonna go naptime now."

"Alenko!" Williams voice rang out and Shepard felt a pang of worry for the comm psi. Were robots really that hard to track? With a hard shake of his head, Shepard dismissed it. He'd have time to worry about it when his squad wasn't being picked off.

Turning to Rex, he asked, "Got enough missiles for another volley?" The dog barked an affirmative, so he pointed at the further target. "Take that one out. I've got the close one. Fire on my mark." Rex nodded and braced himself. The missile racks on his shoulders extended slightly, revealing another row of launch tubes. Shepard fiddled with his omnitool for a long moment, quickly but carefully compiling a launch program to let his omnitool emulate an artillery barrage. A series of small tech mines launched in rapid succession should be able to take out the sniper nest. When he felt it was ready, he nodded at the dog. "Fire!"

Shepard thrust his fist into the air and let the program run. A dozen fiery projectiles were flung through the air, their launch nearly unnoticeable in the storm of smoke and fire Rex created. A heartbeat later, the staccato roar of explosions once more filled the air. Another beat passed then his comm crackled to life. "Commander," Williams said. "Kaidan says you got them."

"He alright?" Shepard asked quietly, somewhat concerned that the man wasn't making the call himself.

"No," she replied. "He's only partly conscious, but he says he's sure."

"Damnit," he said grimly. "Okay, at least the snipers are dead. We're moving to your location. Let's meet up and deal with the rest of these things." Williams clicked the comm in acknowledgement and so man and robotic dog disappeared into the smoke. The squad's communications continued uninterrupted thankfully, and they were soon reunited. Williams held Alenko, who must have finished the journey into unconsciousness while they were moving, in a fireman's carry over one shoulder, her stolen rifle strapped loosely to Alenko and his plasma rifle in her free hand. Kadderal and Jenkins followed right behind, trying to watch everywhere at once.

The squad then went back on the hunt, determined to stop these robots before they could rejoin their comrades. Fortunately, or unfortunately Shepard felt, not even a full thirty seconds later they found all six of the remaining aliens. Jenkins and Rex charged in quickly, kinetic barriers raised, as the rest of the squad threw themselves into cover.

The dog spat plasma as he ran, forcing the aliens to scatter. Jenkins seized on the opportunity and all but tackled one. His alloy cannon roared and the alien collapsed in a shower of sparks and white robotic gore. Jenkins' momentum carried him past the thing and he dove over a low fragment of the ship to use as cover. Two of the five aliens turned and kept the rookie pinned, while the rest focused on the rest of the group, swiftly suppressing everyone but Shepard. He immediately lined up a shot and sent two bolts of plasma hissing downrange. His target was torn apart easily, leaving only two left facing most of his squad.

In response, one of the aliens suppressing Jenkins redirected its fire, sending Shepard hunkering down into cover. A heartbeat later, a small disc came sailing over the low rise Williams, Alenko and Kadderal all sheltered behind. "Grenade!" he heard Williams shout as she threw herself and her comatose cargo away. Kadderal instantly jumped on it, curling around the explosive with her back to her comrades.

Shepard thought he heard a whispered goodbye and the device exploded. Kadderal, no, Lauren's body was flung by the force of the blast, sending her tumbling to a rest almost a full three meters away. She lay there on her back, the front of her armor a ruin of twisted metal and blood and her lifesigns already flatlining on his HUD.

Shepard's face twisted into a vicious, angry scowl and he swung out of cover and punched at the aliens. A lance of raw psionic energy shot out in a rush, spearing one through the chest and messily tearing it into two pieces. The three remaining aliens all turned to focus their fire on him before their comrade's body had even hit the ground. Shepard stumbled back under the onslaught, almost feeling the bullets whizzing by him before he could get back behind cover.

At the same time, Jenkins seized the opportunity and struck down the alien that had thrown the grenade, his alloy cannon forming a hole big enough for a small man to crawl through. Rex blitzed one of the final two aliens as well, careening into it and sending them both to the ground, where he swiftly tore it apart. The last tried to save its comrade from the dog, but Williams brought it down in a blistering hail of plasma fire.

Finally, the area went silent. "That's the last of them," Shepard said quietly, a little sadly. "Everyone alright?"

"Just bruises, sir," Williams said. Her voice took on a new tone, a combination of bitterness and gratitude that Shepard had heard before; the tone of someone thankful for their life, but angry at the cost. "Kadderal saved our lives."

"Kinda beat up," Jenkins said tonelessly. Shepard felt for the kid, it was unlikely he'd seen an operation go this bad before. "But I'll live."

"Alright," Shepard said, a bit distractedly. "Good." Rex edged up and nudged the commander's hand, earning him a distracted pat. The dog whined quietly and gently bit his hand. Shepard jumped and shook himself from his thoughts. "Right. We've still got a job to do, and we're gonna make sure it gets done. Williams, leave Alenko here, he should be safe enough and we need to move fast and light." The gunnery chief nodded and sat the unconscious comm psi against a piece of rubble. "We'll come back for all of them as soon as we're done here. For now, we're going to that tram station and we're going to kill the son of a bitch dragging that beacon around."

"Oorah," Williams said angrily. Shepard nodded at her and led the charge into the mist, heading for the tram station.

* * *

The squad jogged across the clearing at double-time, long, loping strides eating the distance rapidly. The ruins of the tram station loomed out of smoke as they drew near, forcing the swiftly lightening smoke to swirl in chaotic patterns as the wind blew through. Shepard charged right in without paying it a second thought, determined not to let the beacon get away after what this mission had cost already. The rest of the squad followed him, warily watching for hostiles.

They scrambled over the rubble for a few seconds and finally found the beacon. The aliens had cleared a small area and set it down in the middle of it. As it came into view, it was pulsing brightly, green streaks, eerily reminiscent of a psionic corona save the color, weaved through the air, gently caressing the hovering form of a male turian surrounded by a collection of the alien robots. The turian was set on the ground as the humans neared and the robots opened fire.

The humans scrambled into cover, returning fire when they could. A voice, carrying the distinctive turian twang, carried over the entire battlefield. "I give you one warning, humans. Stay out of my way and your people may survive the coming storm." Shepard answered him with a volley of plasma. Fuck that shit. Combat resumed then, shots trading back and forth for a few brief seconds, felling a pair of the alien robots.

Suddenly, a shadow descended on the battlefield and a low, bonerattling roar filled the air. The sound consumed Shepard's entire being as the ruins he stood in vibrated wildly, pieces collapsing without warning and throwing up clouds of dust to join the thin smoke in the air. The humans collapsed, clutching their ears in agony. Even Rex cowered from the sound, squirming under the onslaught. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began, leaving the surroundings utterly silent.

Shepard shakily returned to his feet and glanced up to see a massive form blotting out the sky. A ship, easily over a kilometer long and shaped like a demented squid hovered less than fifty meters overhead. He stared in shock at the ship casually violating everything he knew about orbital vessels. The turian's voice rang out again. "You cannot possibly understand the forces you are opposing," he called and Shepard's attention snapped back to where he stood beside the beacon. A brilliant blue flare flashed from the ship and then the beacon and all of the aliens rose into the air.

Shepard scowled, pushing his shock at the sight away through sheer force of will. They were not going to get away with that beacon. A hand lashed out, a helpful mnemonic as his mind reached out and grabbed the beacon in a purple fist. He gave a mighty roar and yanked it out of the bullshit tractor beam these aliens had. The blue light fought his grip but it was slowly losing. Inch by inch, eternal second by eternal second, the beacon slid out of its grasp until it finally lost traction entirely and the beacon shot down like it was fired from a cannon. The device hit the ground before he could catch it and exploded, throwing green streaks and sharp shrapnel flying through the air.

The commander slumped in place, completely exhausted by the effort. The ship gave another earthshaking roar, echoed on a much smaller scale by the turian who disappeared into the ship mid-scream. The next second, one of the ship's limbs had adjusted to point straight at Shepard, a baleful red growing deep within it.

"Oh... shit..." Shepard said slowly, struggling to fight through his exhaustion and run. He managed a single step and his legs gave out, dropping him on his face.

"Commander!" Jenkins shouted, turning back as the rest of the squad continued to advance to the rear. The rookie rushed to Shepard's side and bodily picked him up, ignoring his muttered pleas to leave him and run. Jenkins took a look at the ship above them and chuckled, low and resigned. "Sorry, Commander. Looks like you'll have to tell her after all."

"Wha-" was all Shepard managed to get out before he was suddenly flying back-first through the air. "NO!" He tried to call up his psionics, but he lacked the energy to even form a corona. His eyes locked onto Jenkins' form as the rookie recovered from his throw and tried to run. At practically the same instant, the ship fired. Hellish red light shot out of the ship in a brilliant stream, slamming right through the kid, and exploded.

The shockwave hit the commander like a truck, sending him spinning wildly and moving even faster through the air. He clenched his eyes shut and curled into a ball to protect himself as he tumbled uncontrollably. An impossibly long second later, he hit the ground, hard. Pain shot through his entire body as he bounced back into the air then came slamming back down. He skipped along the surface more times than he could count, each impact worse than the last.

Finally, he hit something solid enough to arrest his momentum and drop him to the floor. He landed heavily on his back, gravity uncurling his body. He tried to sit up, but even that simple motion sent agony roaring through every inch of his body. His eyes opened blearily and he distantly noticed the god damned mechanical cuttlefish rising into the air and disappearing into the clouds through the dark fog encroaching on his vision. Smaller, insectile ships swarmed around the thing, dueling with the human ships that had followed the enormous vessel down. The fog quickly covered everything, making it nearly impossible to follow the battle overhead, and his eyes closed as he surrendered to the siren call of blissful, painless sleep.

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Trooper**  
**May, 2183**  
_The standard unit of this new enemy force, known as the Geth according to Citadel records, is a multipurpose mobile platform, capable of fulfilling a wide range of functions. Externally, it vaguely echoes its Quarian creator's shape, with three fingered hands and digitigrade legs. The only aesthetic difference is the head, where it bears a single ocular sensor, colloquially referred to as a 'flashlight' thanks to the soft glow it emits, and nothing else. Much like Sectoids in the Ethereal War, we believe these Geth communicate via direct mind links, albeit with electronics instead of psionics._

_The platform itself is composed of two significant parts. A flexible but highly durable outer shell of an unknown material and synthetic musculature that endows the platform with phenomenal strength for its size. A thorough inspection of the platform's musculature has revealed several ways to improve our Titan Armor strength-enhancement modules. In addition, while they have no internal organ analogues, they do possess a circulatory-esque system of tubing that pumps a white, highly conductive fluid all throughout the platform. At this time, we cannot be sure of its purpose but we theorize it is used to distribute power to its components._

_Examination of the unit's processing core revealed that the platform erased itself before deactivation. We are unsure if this is an in-built process or if it must be activated by the platform's artificial intelligence. Fortunately, the hardware was left mostly intact. Thorough investigation coupled with information published to the extranet by the Quarians has revealed that these platforms operate using a "neural network" to boost their individual capacities. Any given platform is likely to carry anywhere from 80 to 100 individual Geth programs. Alone they are incapable of more than the most basic of tasks, but as the network grows, each program's intelligence becomes more powerful. The theoretical computing capacity of the larger platforms is extremely unsettling._

**RESEARCH REPORT**  
**Codename: Husk**  
**May 2183**  
_A potent terror weapon, this part of the Geth force is created through a truly unsettling procedure. Using a device we have come to call Dragon's Teeth, the Geth impale a human victim through the chest and suspend them several meters in the air. Once there, the device drains the victim's blood and replaces it with a fluid carrying a staggering number of highly complex and robust nanomachines that begin the conversion process. These nanomachines begin a swift and complete conversion of all organic components into cybernetic equivalents. While the exact purpose of this conversion is unclear, as it is an inefficient process and the devices appear to gain little from it, the result carries an undeniable psychological effect on our soldiers._

_Externally, these husks, as they are called, appear almost human, in the broadest strokes. The blood replacement has a significant effect on skintone, rendering them uniformly grey, save where the internal cybernetics come to the surface in a bright blue._

_Internally is another matter. Once converted, the husks are entirely synthetic. Their internal structure only vaguely resembles human organs. The rearrangement is performed on an almost molecular scale. By studying the responsible nanomachines, we believe we can greatly enhance our current manufacturing abilities through use of similar techniques._


	10. Preliminary Investigations

**Chapter 9: Preliminary Investigations**

Shepard awoke to a throbbing headache. He groaned heartily, clenching his eyes shut tight as one hand moved to massage his temples. A voice, highlighted by a series of excited barks, called out from nearby, but he was far too lost in agony to understand a word. Eventually though, his headache shifted from 'chryssalid larvae in the brain' to merely painful, and the rest of his body had room to make its displeasure with him known. His arm fell to the side and he moaned pitifully.

A new voice intruded on his suffering then, and said, "How are you feeling Commander?" Blessed relief swept over him with those words, the sudden lack of pain somehow almost becoming pleasure.

"Like I just went twenty rounds with a Muton," he grumbled as he sat up and opened his eyes. He beheld an older woman, short-cropped grey hair topping a lightly wrinkled visage, pulling a syringe from the IV leading into his arm. She must be the ship's doctor. "What happened?" he asked groggily.

"You were at ground zero," Williams' voice intruded suddenly. Shepard's head snapped to his left with a sudden pop, causing him to flinch at the unnerving feeling of vertebrae sliding against each other on top of his general soreness. Williams, wearing the XCOM BDU instead of her armor, and Rex stood along the wall on the opposite side of the med-bay, the windows into the crew deck behind them thankfully opaqued. Rex barked a joyous greeting as soon as he realized Shepard was looking their way, earning him a small smile. "Whoever was controlling that ship really wanted you dead," Williams continued. "If not for Jenkins, you would have been."

That reminder cut right through Shepard, and he scowled thunderously. That mission cost entirely too many lives. "He was a good soldier," he said bitterly. "They all were. They deserved better." Something suddenly occurred to Shepard. "What about Alenko?"

"Lieutenant Alenko is behind you," the doctor cut in suddenly, putting an emphasis on the word 'lieutenant'. Huh, Shepard mused, he must have been promoted. The commander carefully craned a look over his shoulder and saw Alenko's slim form on the next bed over. "Physically, he's fine," the doctor said. "But he overused his psionics by a frightful amount. He should be awake tomorrow and combat ready in a week."

Shepard turned a look back to the woman. "Thanks, Doctor..." he trailed off, belatedly realizing he hadn't met the woman on his earlier explorations of the _Normandy_.

"Doctor Karin Chakwas," she supplied. "I would say it is a pleasure to meet you Commander, but you will forgive me if I say the circumstances could have been much better."

"Can't argue that," Shepard agreed wryly, smiling further as Rex barked an agreement. When Williams voiced her agreement, Shepard sent her a look and asked, "Not that I'm complaining, but what are you doing here, Chief?"

She sent him a surprised look before realization flashed behind her eyes and she looked mildly embarrassed. "After everything that went down on Eden Prime, I was reassigned to the _Normandy_," she explained hurriedly. "Captain Anderson thought I'd be a good fit and, well, uh," she prevaricated for a brief moment, before finishing in a rush. "You need replacements. So here I am."

Shepard scowled at the reminder, but nodded to her anyway. She had proven her worth on Eden Prime. He opened his mouth to ask if she knew about any other new guys when Captain Anderson walked into the room. "EDI said you were awake Commander, good to see it. How are you holding up?"

Shepard started, realizing he hadn't yet heard the diagnosis from the doctor. He turned to her with a questioning look and she answered for him. "The Commander will be fine, given time. He suffered extensive bruising, and once the painkillers wear off, he will not be enjoying himself, but I have treated him as much as I am able." Turning to Shepard, she handed him a large tube full of some sort of gel and continued. "Apply this to your bruises twice a day. I expect you will be combat capable tomorrow, and fully recovered by next week."

"Good to hear," Anderson said before he could respond. "Now, can I speak with our XO privately? It's time for a debriefing."

"Of course," the doctor said as Williams saluted and the women walked out of the infirmary.

Anderson waved a hand at Rex, who had refused to move. "You too." Rex cocked his head and whined quietly. "No, this debriefing is classified." The dog stubbornly refused to move.

"Rex, I'll be fine. Just go wait outside." The dog slumped where it stood, but nodded at Shepard and slowly trudged out the door.

"That's an... interesting SHIV you've got there," Anderson commented idly. Despite the captain's mild tone, Shepard thought he could hear a hint of reprimand in the comment.

"Tell me about it. He's saved my life, and the lives of most of the people I've served with, at least once though. He's not going anywhere," he said forcefully. "You want me, he comes too."

"Relax Commander," Anderson rejoined, raising his hands in a gesture of peace. "I'm not planning to send it away. I'm just surprised by its willfulness, and loyalty to you."

"Oh," Shepard said, suddenly feeling rather foolish. He cast about for something to change the subject to for a couple seconds before realizing the answer was staring him in the face. Literally. "Anyway," he coughed gently then asked, "what did you want to talk to me about sir?"

Anderson sighed, clearly not liking what he had to say. "The attack on Eden Prime was as obvious a declaration of war as humanity has ever received. Not since the Ethereals have we faced an enemy willing to attack on us on that scale. XCOM is going to war with these aliens, no doubt about it."

"Do we even know who's responsible?" Shepard asked, confused. "I only saw drones on the ground."

"The drones _are_ the enemy," Anderson answered. Shepard simply looked more confused, so he elaborated. "The drones you were fighting are controlled by a type of AI called the Geth. According to intel, the Quarians built the things centuries ago and they turned on their creators, killing ninety-nine percent of the Quarian population and driving the rest away from their homeworld. They've drifted through the stars in what they call the Migrant Fleet ever since"

Shepard felt a pang of sympathy for the Quarians. A hostile force deciding you need to die for no reason and murdering your people was a bit too close to human history for comfort. He could easily see the Ethereal War forcing humanity into such an outcome. Thank god XCOM had succeeded as well as it did. Shaking his head to force his thoughts back into order, Shepard then asked, "When are we going to join the war effort?"

"We're not," Anderson said simply.

"What?!" Shepard yelped in outrage, almost able to convince himself he had misheard the captain.

"We're going to find that turian bastard Williams told me about, and we're going to make an example of him." Shepard's outrage vanished abruptly. The _Normandy_ was well-suited for just such a task and he was looking forward to a rematch with the bastard. That was an assignment he could learn to like.

"What do we know about him?"

"His name is Saren Arterius," Anderson answered. "And he's a member of the Council's Special Tactics and Reconnaissance forces. Judging by the extranet data available on him, he's the right hand of the Citadel Council."

"Well shit."

* * *

"The Council recognizes Donnel Udina, Emissary of the Human Coalition," Councillor Tevos said, formally starting the meeting with the human diplomat. Sparatus studied the man intently as he stepped up to the petitioning stand. He looked worried, haggard. Dark bags had formed under his eyes. From what Sparatus understood of human physiology, that was like a drooping fringe; it meant lack of sleep. Heh, politicians never did handle military emergencies well, and there really wasn't any other way to describe the Eden Prime attack without expletives.

He had to admit to being intrigued on the Coalition's response though. If they did as he expected, he stood to make a hundred credits off the Primarch. Udina's voice broke into his thoughts then, forcibly dragging his attention back to the present. "Honorable Councillors," the human began. "As you are no doubt aware, approximately twenty hours ago, the human colony of Eden Prime was besieged by a synthetic race known as the Geth."

"Yes," the new salarian Councillor, Valern, said. "It was unfortunate that the beacon was lost, but the Geth do not have it either. For that, you have our thanks." Sparatus quickly voiced his agreement of the sentiment.

Udina acknowledged their gratitude with a gracious nod then continued. "What you may not know however, is that this was the largest force brought to bear against a human world since the Ethereal War. As we speak, XCOM is preparing a force to pass through the Perseus Veil and exterminate the Geth. When we are done, there will be nothing left." And there went the Primarch's hundred credits.

Tevos made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a heavy breath. She leveled a thoroughly unimpressed look on Udina. "We did not grant you this meeting to let you pontificate. After the way your government handled the Hegemony, no one is surprised by your gross overreactions." She leveled a glare at the humans. "Stop wasting our time and get to the point."

Udina handled the asari's displeasure with the ease of long practice, as he had for years now. Tevos had disliked the man, and humanity in general, ever since the Sacking of Adek, and the dissolution of the Batarian Hegemony nine years ago had only added to it. The human emissary smiled grimly at her and nodded, conceding the point.

"Very well. I am here for two reasons," he said coolly. "First, the Coalition formally requests any information you are willing to share on the Geth. Anything would be of assistance, but their known capabilities, preferred tactics and force estimates would be ideal."

Tevos scowled and opened her mouth, but Valern beat her to the punch. "Acceptable. We will compile a data package immediately." The asari turned a mild glare on the salarian for interrupting her. He ignored her masterfully and tapped a message into his omnitool. "Bear in mind that our data is almost three centuries old however. It is unlikely to still be valid."

"I suggest you consult the Quarians as well, Emissary," Sparatus chipped in with a suggestion of his own. Helping the Coalition against the Geth could only help the Citadel after all. "They built the Geth, and are eager for revenge. They could be a great asset to your campaign."

"Thank you, Councillors," Udina said with a bow. When he returned upright, he immediately launched into the next topic. "Now, the secon-" The emissary cut himself off as a commotion broke out at the base of the stairs behind him. He smiled slightly and stepped back from the platform with a muttered apology. The emissary moved to the top of the stairs and shouted something Sparatus couldn't understand to the beings below. A beat passed and he turned back to the Council with a smug grin.

Sparatus almost sighed. He wondered idly whose breakfast the man was going to defecate in today. A second later, he wished he'd never had the thought. A trio of heavily armed and armored humans, accompanied by an equally heavily armed robotic version of some kind of varren crested the top of the stairs. The entire group was surrounded by an incredibly nervous ring of C-SEC agents whose weapons were not _quite_ pointing at the humans.

Their body language was as completely unconcerned as Udina's however, and Sparatus couldn't help but yet again admire the sheer audacity of the emissary. If nothing else, he consistently made politics interesting. At the same time, Sparatus was girding himself for what was coming. Tevos was not going to like this.

"What is the meaning of this?!" she all but shrieked. "You dare bring armed soldiers into a diplomatic meeting?!"

"These are not soldiers, Councillor," Udina said, calmly ignoring the C-SEC agents setting up firing positions on the balcony. "They are witnesses."

"Witnesses?" Valern said reproachfully. Sparatus was somewhat amused to note the salarian's hand hovering over the button to seal the Council's platform from the rest of the chamber. "To what crime? And why has it been brought to us?"

"These four are the survivors of one of our ground teams on Eden Prime," Udina answered calmly. Sparatus felt his mandibles flex unconsciously. What had happened on Eden Prime that would need witnesses brought to the Council? A cold feeling suddenly settled over him. There was something more than the Geth present. Something involving the Council. But what?

"We dispatched Lieutenant Commander Shepard and his squad," Udina gestured at the soldiers behind him. "With orders to secure or destroy the beacon. Imagine their surprise when they found it in the hands of a group of Geth led by a Council Spectre."

The entire massive chamber, and the hundreds of people witnessing this meeting, went completely silent.

"What." Tevos said, unable to add the normal inflection to the question through her shock.

Udina nodded and held out a hand, palm up. A brief glint of metal shone from his hand before a small hologram buzzed to life, floating a few inches above his hand. The small bust was unmistakable however. "Oh Saren, you stupid, barefaced, son of a Gallian whore..." Sparatus muttered loudly as Tevos began swearing colorfully under her breath.

That explained why the turian's sudden and mysterious mission required radio silence. Sparatus' talons tightened around his podium, the loud screech of claw on metal rang through the room. What was that idiot thinking?!

Valern's voice suddenly cut into his thoughts. "I take it you have proof of your claims, Emissary?"

Udina waved one of the humans behind him forward. The man at the front of the group walked forward to take a position beside the emissary. "I am Lieutenant-Commander Shepard of the XCS _Normandy_," the man announced strongly with a brief nod to the Council. "I have eye-witness testimony and recordings from three separate perspectives." Udina flexed his hand and the hologram of Saren transformed into a two-dimensional screen showing Shepard's final round of combat on Eden Prime. "As you can see, Saren was most definitely present, and he certainly appeared to be in a position of authority over the Geth."

"I see," Valern said, watching the video play out intently. The video reached the appearance of the enormous dreadnought and shocked silence settled over the room again. Udina cut the video as the dreadnought fired and Sparatus, for the first time in a long while, felt fear. A dreadnought that could practically land was unheard of. What the hell had the Geth been doing for the last three hundred years?

Tevos was the first to recover, somehow, and spoke, her voice hinting at a leashed ferocity. "I do not know what Saren was doing there, but you may rest assured that this Council had nothing to do with it." Sparatus flinched at her words. He had completely forgotten about Saren in the face of that ship. Right, he could worry about that when he didn't need to worry about a human supercarrier tearing apart Citadel Space looking for the spirits-cursed bareface.

"Yes," Sparatus voiced his agreement quickly. It had to be made clear that Saren had gone rogue. He looked at his colleagues and said, "In light of the evidence the Coalition has provided, I move to revoke Saren's Spectre status pending further investigation."

"Seconded," Valern said.

Tevos nodded and tapped the order into her podium. "Agreed." She gazed at the humans below. "But we shall be investigating this matter. _Alone_."

Udina's eyes narrowed. "No," he said forcibly. "The Coalition _will_ be involved in this investigation, and when we find that son of a bitch, we will hang him by his entrails."

Tevos leveled a stony glare at him. "And that is exactly why you will not," she insisted. "That could have easily been a fabrication or a body double meant to trick you into one of your bloodthirsty crusades to destroy him. I have seen how your people operate, Emissary. You will not do so in Citadel Space."

Udina returned her glare. "I apologize," he said, visibly bristling. Sparatus cocked his head as he regarded the man. He had never apologized before, and his tone was far too angry for it to be genuine. What was his game? "I believe I was unclear. XCOM _will _be involved in this investigation, regardless of your opinion. We will hunt him down with, or without you, and _when _we find him we will extract the truth. Then we will kill him."

"You arrogant, bloodthirsty _pyjak_!" Tevos roared. Sparatus felt his mandibles flare in surprise. He'd never see the asari this angry. She stilled abruptly, eyes closed as she heaved deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, her features had gone distant, cold. When she spoke, only the slightest hint of the towering rage Sparatus could see behind her eyes leaked through. "You think we will stand idly by as you destroy our worlds in a mad quest for vengeance? Against a being who may not even be guilty?" Her voice turned into a low, deadly hiss. "I will personally see your entire species put to the torch before you set foot on our worlds."

For the first time in a long while, Sparatus saw Donnel Udina genuinely shocked. The man stared at the furious asari in stupefied awe. The human next to him, Shepard, put a hand on the emissary's shoulder and shook him. Udina flinched and quickly recomposed himself, a rosy flush to his cheeks. Sparatus coughed forcefully before the human could restart the argument. "I propose a compromise."

Tevos' stony regard darted from the humans to him, but Valern's voice stopped her from speaking. "I agree. This is an extreme situation. Allowances must be made." She closed her eyes and sighed defeatedly.

"Oh very well. What do you suggest?"

"The Coalition will be allowed to send one ship, no bigger than a frigate, to hunt for Saren," Sparatus began. "This ship will be accompanied at all times by a Spectre of our choice and restricted to the Attican Traverse, barring explicit permission from that Spectre."

"An... acceptable compromise," Tevos said slowly, eying the humans. Udina opened his mouth but she spoke over him. "And the only one I will allow," she finished with a vicious glare.

Udina's mouth moved soundlessly for a brief moment, but he recovered and said, "The Coalition accepts on one condition: the Spectre must be Nihlus Kryik."

Sparatus wasn't surprised by that request. Nihlus was the Spectre that had spent the most time in Coalition Space since the Sacking of Adek. It was only logical the Coalition would prefer the spy they knew. When Tevos glanced back at him, he nodded his approval. "Very well," she said. "Nihlus will meet your chosen investigators in your office later today." Udina nodded sharply. "Is there anything _else_ to discuss?"

"Not at this time, Councillors," Udina said with a curt bow. He and Shepard turned and rejoined the other humans and the group swiftly made their way out of the Council chambers, taking the tension in the air with them.

When they were gone, Tevos spoke quietly. "I truly hope you know what you have done, Sparatus."

"The only thing that would stop full scale war," he rejoined solemnly. "I just hope the Traverse survives it."

* * *

"Damn obstructionist bureaucrats," Williams bit out angrily as soon as the elevator doors closed. "They'd be more eager to help if it was Sanves the Geth had hit."

"Relax, Gunnery Chief," Udina countered calmly, now the very picture of serenity. Shepard felt a hand rise to massage his temples in a futile attempt to soothe his sudden headache. He'd never understand politicians. "They're just protecting their people." A mildly deprecating smile graced the emissary's lips. "We're not exactly known for our discretion. I would have done much the same in her place." His smile turned into a wry grin. "I think I'm starting to rub off on them. Or Tevos at least."

"Still," she insisted heatedly. "One of their top agents torches a colony and we're supposed to stand back and let him get away with it?!" She turned aside and muttered under her breath. "Times like this, I get more and more certain Harper was right."

Shepard's brain locked up at that. Rex whirled on the Gunnery Chief and pinned her with a deadly stare. The dogs ears lay flat on its skull as it emitted a low, rumbling, angry growl that echoed through the small elevator. Shepard wasn't far behind him, furious purple-tinged eyes locked with shocked brown. Shepard's hands tightened into fists at his sides and the woman took a step back under the ferocity of his glare.

"Williams, you don't know me, so I will let that one slide," he bit out, small flares of psionics bursting to life around his fists. "But if we are going to work together, you will understand one thing. Any mention of Jack Harper that doesn't involve beating him to death with his own skull is going to end with something getting broken. That sectoid-fucking psychopath killed my entire family with his bullshit." Purple started encroaching on the edge of his vision and Williams pushed herself back against the wall of the elevator. Some part of Shepard, a part he didn't like to admit existed, relished in the fear in her eyes. "I was on Mindoir. I've seen exactly what he meant when he talked about sacrifice," he spat viciously. "And-"

"Commander!" Alenko barked as he bodily pulled the man away from Williams and pushed him up against the far wall of the elevator. Rex seized the opportunity and threw his own considerable weight into keeping the commander subdued. Shepard's glare turned to the lieutenant, who continued quickly. "Calm down, Commander! You're going to break the elevator!"

The words somehow managed to pierce the veil of his anger, dispersing it almost instantly. The randomly strobing purple flares, a small selection hovering around Alenko's head even, died instantly. The walls of the elevator gave an audible groan at the abrupt lack of pressure against them and, now that he wasn't blinded by anger, Shepard noticed small spiderweb cracks in a few places along the walls. Shame infused him, dragging his posture into a slump and he found himself unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Sorry," he muttered contritely. He shook himself out of Alenko's grasp and shot a look at him and Rex. "Thank you, really." He tried to make his gratitude clear in his voice and posture. Alenko waved it off but Rex barked a reproach at him. The dog stared him down for a long moment, judging his sincerity, then moved aside, allowing Shepard to cross the elevator to Williams, where he held a hand out to help her up. She eyed it warily, as if it was a particularly venomous snake. Each second she refused to move only added to his shame.

Finally, she grasped his hand and let him haul her to her feet. "Wow," she said quietly, eying the commander with thinly disguised wariness. "Can't say I've ever had a CO react that badly."

"Indeed," Udina said. The emissary's features had gone utterly blank. Shepard couldn't make heads or tails of what he was thinking. When he spoke though, reprimand was clear in his voice. "I trust this won't happen again?"

"No sir," Shepard said quietly. His voice gained strength as he finished emphatically. "It won't."

"Good. I would hate to have to find another investigator."

That cut through Shepard's internal litany of self-recrimination, but replaced it with confusion. He wasn't sure he liked that any better. "Wha..?" he managed to get out through his uncertainty.

"You have a reputation, Commander," Udina answered his half-formed question. "Of getting results. And to be honest, you scare the bejeezus out of most everyone who has heard of Khar'shan. The hunt for Saren needs both." Udina turned to meet Shepard's gaze, and waited patiently for the commander to meet his. "I'm not going to lie to you, Shepard. After that display, I don't trust you." Shepard almost flinched at the man's accusatory tone. "But I still think you're the best choice we have. Don't prove me wrong."

Shepard stiffened into attention. "I won't, Emissary." He waited a beat, then said, "Thank you." Udina just grunted in acknowledgement. Shepard closed his eyes and resolved to start practicing meditation again. It had helped after Khar'shan, hopefully it would do so again.

* * *

The rest of the trip to the human embassy passed in uncomfortable silence. Only Emissary Udina showed no sign that Shepard's outburst had affected him. Everyone else was too busy being some combination of sheepish, wary and emotionally spent. Fortunately, once they reached the office, Captain Anderson was there to break the silence. "How'd it go?" he asked, rising to his feet as soon as they walked in.

"Worse than I expected," Udina said bluntly. A slight smile graced his features a split second later. "But better than I feared. We'll be allowed to send a single investigation team to search for Saren in Citadel Space, but they will be accompanied by a Council Spectre." Anderson frowned briefly, but Udina waved him to follow before he could speak. "Come with me, there are some things we need to discuss about it. In private," he finished with a pointed look at the ground squad. Shepard saluted and watched as the pair disappeared into Udina's private office.

Once they left, another awkward silence settled over the remaining quartet, growing more strained with every passing second. A few moments later, Shepard couldn't take the silence any longer. He turned to Williams, bowed his head, and said, "Gunnery Chief, I need to apologize again. I didn't mean for any of that to happen. I lost control. I have no excuse. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

Williams gave him a startled look that quickly transformed into an inscrutable blankness. She let him stew for several agonizingly long heartbeats before saying, "Yes. You can stop being such a woman about it." Shepard's eyes shot up, shocked at the response. Amusement danced in her eyes at his expression. "You scared the shit out of me Commander, but God knows what I would do if my sisters had been on Mindoir and you'd said something that stupid. Don't hold it against me and we'll call it even. Deal?" She stuck out her hand.

A toothy grin spread across Shepard's lips as he shook her hand enthusiastically. "Deal."

Rex yipped happily as soon as he released her hand and moved over to Williams. He started nuzzling her hand, trying to get her to play with him. She laughed briefly and obliged the dog as Alenko and Shepard watched idly. The earlier tension had been completely dispersed. Shepard smiled to himself, hopefully the Spectre would be this easy to work with. Whenever he arrived.

* * *

Two hours later, Shepard was of two minds on the Spectre. On one hand, the downtime was nice as it gave him the opportunity to dredge up the old, half-forgotten meditation exercises he'd learned to deal with the nightmares after Khar'shan. On the other, if even half of the extranet data on Saren Arterius was true, he could have vanished completely from everyone but the Shadow Broker by now.

Bah, no use dwelling on that. There wasn't anything he could do about it anyway. Better to spend the time being productive. Shepard had just settled back into the first stages of a meditative trance when a chime sounded throughout the embassy, shattering his concentration. A few seconds later, Udina and Anderson came in from the back office at the same time the front door opened, admitting a dark reddish-brown skinned turian with white clan markings splashing every which way on his face. Shepard climbed to his feet as Udina stepped forward and greeted the alien. "Nihlus, good to see you again," he said without preamble. The turian returned the greeting with a nod. "I assume the Council has briefed you?"

"Yes, though I can hardly believe it. It is... out of character for Saren."

Williams snorted, but thankfully said nothing. Udina stepped up at the same instant, barrelling ahead before the turian could think about it. "Regardless, he was there. The important thing now is to bring him to justice. To that end, allow me to introduce you to our part of the team." The emissary waved Shepard forward, so the man stepped up to face the Spectre. "This is Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard of the XCS _Normandy_, he has been chosen to lead this investigation." Udina waved a hand at the squad. "Commander, this is Nihlus Kryik, the Spectre assigned to your unit." He gave the commander a pointed look. "Try to get along, yes?"

"Yes sir," Shepard said simply. He turned to Nihlus and extended a hand.

The turian grasped it and shook heartily. "It is good to finally meet you, Commander. I have heard much about you."

"Thank you. I'm looking forward to working with a Council Spectre." Shepard gestured behind him, pointing out the members of his squad as he named them. "This is Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, a C-6 psionic, and Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, vanilla human. And that's Rex, our SHIV."

Nihlus sent the commander a blank look. "Care to explain yourself, Commander? C-6? SHIV? And why is a cyberdog part of your command?" His voice lowered slightly in confusion. "I had thought myself familiar with your culture, but evidently, I have more to learn. My contacts in Coalition Space never used such terms."

"Really?" Shepard asked, surprised. Nihlus had spent a good amount of time in human space, he should be familiar with the basics at least. Shepard scowled internally as something occurred to him. Nihlus' contacts were probably being deliberately obtuse. It wouldn't have been the first time XCOM gave a Spectre the run around. "Then we'll start with the simplest. SHIV stands for Super Heavy Infantry Vehicle. In essence, a heavily armed and armored weapons platform operated by a highly sophisticated VI. In this case, Rex was originally a robotic pet that was repurposed into a weapon of war." The dog barked a greeting and Nihlus looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"I see. Are you sure that's safe?" Rex chuffed and glared at the turian before deliberately turning away. The snub just unsettled Nihlus further.

"Rex is harmless. Well, as long as you're not an enemy. We've been employing SHIVs on the battlefield since the Ethereal War, and we have never had a severe incident."

"Very well, I will defer to your judgment," Nihlus said diplomatically, though it was clear he wasn't quite comfortable with the idea. "And the rest?"

"The other terms are psionic classifications," Shepard explained, snaring Nihlus' attention. "Psionic abilities come in four categories: Direct, Indirect, Communication, and Transportation."

"I am familiar with the types of psionics Commander. Allow me to guess how these terms match to what I know?" When Shepard nodded, the turian continued, phrasing his statement as a question. "The Direct category covers the application of physical force?" Shepard nodded and gestured at a potted plant beside Udina's desk. A small purple corona flared around Shepard's hand and the hovered off the ground. "Interesting. Then Indirect is for mental manipulations of the target?"

"Yes. It covers things like inducing panic and mind control," Shepard answered without thinking.

Nihlus went very, very still. "Mind control?" he asked carefully. "I had always dismissed that as an exaggeration."

"It is very true," Udina interjected. Shepard stepped back and let the diplomat un-ruffle the Spectre's feathers. "It is much more limited than you are likely thinking however. It requires a constant direct line of sight and the target is little more than a puppet for the caster. It is also exceedingly obvious." He gestured at the purple light caressing the still-floating plant. "It's hard to infiltrate an organization when your mole is surrounded by that light, would not agree?"

"If that is true, yes," Nihlus said finally. "Though I cannot say I am comfortable with it."

"There is little more we can do to prove the truth of it." The emissary said matter of factly. "If you remain working with us, you will see it in action eventually."

"As you say," Nihlus admitted. Turning back to Shepard, he asked, "What was next? Communication?" Shepard nodded. "These abilities are what are normally called 'Extra-Sensory Perception' or ESP correct?"

"Correct. A Communication psionic can sense the area around them using their gift and use telepathy to communicate with any organic sapient being." That they could also read surface emotions went tactfully unmentioned.

"That just leaves Transportation, which is obviously wormhole creation." Nihlus said with an air of triumph.

"Yup. As you are probably already aware, any given psionic will almost always be able to use abilities from only one of those categories. While exceptions exist, they tend to be correspondingly weaker in each category."

"I am familiar with that much, Commander. What I am truly curious about is the number."

"Well, within a category, an individual's strength is rated using a one to ten scale; one being barely present while ten matching the strongest recorded psionic in all four categories, Abigail O'Connell." The military humans in the room made a small gesture at the name. Nihlus blinked.

"Not to interrupt, but what was that?"

"Colonel O'Connell is something of a pseudo-deific figure to much of our military," Udina explained.

Nihlus mandibles flexed. "Truly? She was the soldier responsible for stopping the Ethereals' Temple Ship from collapsing into a black hole?" When Udina nodded, he continued. "Interesting. Will you tell me more about her?"

Shepard smiled easily; O'Connell's history was one of his favored topics. "She was the first human psionic. Her powers awakened during the Ethereal War, and towards the end of the war, she linked her powers to the Ethereal hive-mind. When she did, she became something _more_. She achieved record-breaking strength in every category, and to this day there has not been born a psionic that could match her. She used that ability to great effect during the War, ultimately saving our homeworld from complete annihilation at the cost of her own life. She died the greatest hero in human history, and we honor her for it."

"I see," Nihlus said, his voice distracted. His eyes gazed out into the middle distance. The Spectre was clearly no longer in the room. A minute later, Udina coughed gently, breaking the turian from his reverie. He looked mildly embarrassed to Shepard's inexperienced eye and continued sheepishly. "Anyway, I believe you were explaining your psionic terminology?"

"Yes," Shepard said with a shake of the head. "As I said, each psionic is individually rated from one to ten. Then it is paired with the psionic's category to form a classification. That's where C-6 comes from. Alenko here is a communications psionic, with a strength rating of 6." He put a hand on his chest. "I am a D-10, or direct psionic with a strength rating of 10. If someone were to introduce themselves as a T-4, or I-6 for example, they would be a transport psionic and an indirect psionic respectively. Make sense?"

"It appears simple enough. I assume vanilla means a human without psionic powers?"

"Right," Shepard nodded.

"Excellent." Nihlus paused, mulling the information over. "Is there anything else I should know before we begin?"

Captain Anderson stepped in here, sounding impatient. "Not at this time. We've wasted enough time talking. It's time to start the investigation."

"Quite," Nihlus said. "The Council has tasked C-SEC with searching for any clues to Saren's current whereabouts. The last report before I came down here said that one of the officers, Garrus Vakarian, was following a promising lead, but it contained no details. We will need to find him."

"I may be able to help with that," Udina said easily. Turning to Shepard, he said, "I have a contact in C-SEC, a turian by the name of Chellick. He will be able to tell you where Vakarian is, or how to find out at least."

"Sounds like a plan," Shepard said. "Anyone have anything to add?" When no one spoke, he gestured to the door. "Then let's move."

As the squad plus Nihlus moved to the door, Captain Anderson spoke up. "Commander, stay for a moment please." Shepard glanced back and his heart sank at the expression on Anderson's face. Yea, this was about the elevator. Damnit. He waved the squad ahead and moved back to face the captain, idly noting that Udina had retreated into his office to give them some privacy. "Udina told me what happened," he said with a hint of anger, reproach thick in his tone. Shepard flinched internally, but refused to allow it to show. "The only reason you're not facing court martial is the fact that you just got out of an incredibly hairy mission. As it is, it's a very black mark on an otherwise spotless record. If you _ever_ pull something like that again, I will personally bust you back down to private and see you scrubbing latrines for the rest of your career. Am I understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" Shepard barked as he snapped to attention with a picture perfect salute. "I won't make excuses sir, I fucked up." He looked the captain in the eye. "It won't happen again," he said, willing the captain to see his sincerity.

"See that it doesn't, Commander. For your own sake." Anderson then relaxed slightly and offered him a small smile. Shepard's stance slackened due to his surprise at the gesture. "Off the record, I understand exactly why you did it, and I can't blame you for it. Harper was a monster, and we're all better off with him dead. But you can't let it control you. You've got people counting on you to keep a clear head, and he doesn't deserve the dignity of being angry at. Understand?"

"Y.. yes sir. I think so," Shepard said slowly. "Thank you. You've given me a lot to think about it."

"Good. Now get going, we're counting on you to find Saren," Anderson said with an understanding smile.

Shepard flashed the captain a salute and a smile and jogged out the door.


	11. Suspicious Activity

**Chapter 10: Suspicious Activity**

The walk from the human embassy to the main headquarters of Citadel Security was entirely too long for Shepard's comfort. As soon as the group had stepped foot on the busy thoroughfare, the crowds had parted like the Red Sea. Nearly everywhere he could see, one or more aliens was pointing at them, staring at them, whispering about them, or some combination of the three. Yet none would meet his gaze. What the hell was going on here?

The situation never changed as they moved either. Almost every alien they came across hushed instantly and moved to the side of the path. When a batarian mother practically threw her two children into the nearest building upon catching sight of them, Shepard could take no more. "Nihlus," he called, getting the turian's attention. He waved a hand at the crowd, many of whom visibly flinched at the motion. "What is this?" he asked, honest confusion suffusing his voice. He could understand the staring, even if he didn't like it. There weren't that many humans outside of Coalition Space. But why were they all so afraid?

"Uh..." Nihlus looked at the commander in surprise then looked decidedly uncomfortable. A beat passed and it became clear he was scrambling for a way to phrase his next words diplomatically. Shepard scowled and sighed heavily.

"Look, you're not going to offend me. Just say it."

"Well," the Spectre began sheepishly. "Your organization has something of a reputation. One your people have done little to dissuade." Shepard's scowl shifted into an annoyed frown. That was true enough. "Just be grateful they cannot recognize you personally Commander, or it will be much worse."

Shepard flinched at that reminder. Damnit, he was never going to escape that. Still, he had to know. "How much worse?"

Nihlus glanced around at the assembled crowd, looking for eavesdroppers. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "I assume you have heard of the Nika Riots?"

"Oh," Shepard paled rapidly as the name conjured up memories of the riot in ancient Constantinople that had seen over 30,000 people dead. That would be bad. "Really?" he asked, quietly, a slight hint of desperation in his tone.

"I was exaggerating somewhat," Nihlus admitted quietly, a calm sort of seriousness in his voice. Then his mandibles flexed into a rough approximation of a smile as he continued. "C-SEC would stop it before the death toll could reach four digits."

The humans were silent for a long moment. "I can't tell if you're joking or not," Williams said what Shepard was thinking. Her voice took on an undertone of nervous tension. "And I don't like it."

"Relax Chief," Alenko's voice came over the squad's comm then. When he continued, Shepard was glad the man decided to make it a private conversation. "These people are curious and nervous, not scared. I don't think they've ever seen XCOM personnel in full kit before."

At the same time, Nihlus answered Williams. "Apologies," he said, mandibles flaring into a grin. "I was attempting to be humorous." He sobered abruptly, all trace of amusement gone. "In all seriousness, none of you should visit level 14 of the Zakera Ward. That is where most of the batarian refugees are living. They would not welcome humans. You especially, Commander." Shepard nodded. That was to be expected. Nihlus continued as soon as he did. "You will not incite a riot here, however. Most of these people are simply curious. Few humans visit the Citadel. Even fewer traverse it heavily armed. Pay it no further mind."

Shepard glanced sidelong at Alenko, who nodded discretely. "That, that's good," he said, some of the tension leaking out of him. He cast a look at the now openly eavesdropping pedestrians. "Let's just get out of here."

"As you say, Commander," Nihlus said and resumed the walk to C-SEC headquarters.

* * *

Upon stepping out of the elevator and into the headquarters of C-SEC, Shepard let out a low, impressed whistle. The building was truly massive. Shepard stood at the top of a small flight of steps that led down into a busy, vaguely triangular atrium. Another elevator shaft flanked by a pair of stairwells lined the opposite, wider wall of the triangle. Uniformed aliens of all description moved through the room, their footsteps echoing up towards the ceiling dozens, if not hundreds, of meters overhead. Railed walkways lined the walls as far as he could see, even more aliens rushing along the paths and disappearing into doorways. The chaotic mix sent a surge of nostalgia rushing through Shepard; it reminded him strongly of the _Legetho_.

Of course, that's when they ruined it. Ten officers in heavy armor burst out of the bustle and trained their weapons on the humans, drawing the attention of the entire room and slamming all activity to a halt. Shepard sighed as he and his squad raised their hands in the, somehow, nearly-universal gesture of surrender. Perfect. "Can I help you, officers?" he said calmly, pointedly ignoring the guns and shifting his stare between them as he looked for their leader.

"Drop your weapons!" One of the officers, a turian and presumably the one Shepard was looking for, ordered.

"Sorry officer," he said in a carefully conciliatory tone. He really didn't want a fight here. "But we can't do that. Operational security concerns, I'm afraid."

"You," the officer started to say, but was cut off as Nihlus stepped forward.

"Captain," the Spectre said with a hint of reproach. "It is fine. They are with me." When the officer glanced at him questioningly, he continued. "Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre. This group is operating under my authority."

The officer glared at the other turian as his men relaxed their weapons. "Wonderful," he said scathingly. "You mean to tell me I've got the spirits-cursed Carnifex running around with Spectre protection?" Shepard scowled heavily at the alien's use of his title. Even more so when the silence of the building suddenly took on an undercurrent of tension. Faint whispers drifted down to his ears, and though he could understand little of it, he knew with certainty what they spoke of.

"Look, Captain," Shepard said, carefully keeping his hands raised, even as Williams and Alenko lowered theirs. The tension spiked abruptly as he spoke, but swiftly drained away as he continued without moving. "I have no intention of causing trouble. We're just here looking for someone. As soon as we find them, I will be out of your hair."

Nihlus sent the commander an inscrutable look. "You do realize turians do not have hair, do you not Commander?" Williams started choking on air.

Alenko's voice was incredulous when he asked, "Nihlus, are you trying to make another joke?"

Shepard blinked and his hands lowered absently in his surprise. If a c-psi of all people couldn't read the turian, well, Shepard wasn't sure what to think about that. He blinked again when Nihlus answered, his voice somewhat confused. "No, I wanted to make sure it was not a translation error."

"Oh," Shepard said, feeling no small amount of confusion himself. "It's not. It's a figure of speech. It means we'll stop bothering him." Nihlus made a small sound of comprehension and nodded. Shepard shook his head and forced himself to focus on the more important topics. He turned back to the visibly bemused captain. "Uhh, anyway, as I was saying," he said, trying to get back on topic. His voice picked up strength as he continued. "We have no intention of causing trouble, and we'll be gone as soon as we can." He bowed slightly to the turian. "We're hunting a rogue Spectre, so I can't honestly promise we won't cause you problems, but you have my word that I will do everything in my considerable power to minimize collateral damage."

The captain looked startled at that, and another round of whispers broke out among the audience. A brief moment passed until the turian recovered and scoffed. "The Carnifex? Minimal collateral damage? Hah! I'll believe that when I see it." He chuckled bitterly with a shake of his head. "Bah, there's nothing I can do about it anyway." He turned to walk off. "Just know this. If you pull your usual stunts in my district, Spectre backing or not, you will be spending the rest of your unnatural life in a cell."

And on that mildly ominous note, the captain and his team left abruptly, barking orders at the still-frozen audience that sent them scurrying back to whatever task they should have been doing.

"I think he liked me," Shepard said as soon as the turian was out of earshot. Both Williams and Alenko turned incredulous stares at him while Rex barked an agreement. Shepard chuckled and pat the dog's head. "At least someone agrees with me."

"I would hate to see how the people who _dis_like you react to you, Commander," Nihlus said seriously. He waited a beat then said, "Come, Chellick's office is this way."

Shepard gestured for Nihlus to lead the way and the humans fell in behind him as he walked off. A few minutes and flights of stairs later, Nihlus stopped before a small door on the fourth-level walkway around the antechamber. Beside the door was a small plaque engraved with the words 'Tonn Chellick, Detective'. Well, at least they'd found the right place.

Nihlus activated the door and led the way in as it slid open. The squad trailed behind him to take up positions before the desk at the far end of the mid-sized office. A turian with blue-white facepaint along the lower edge of his mandibles looked up from his paperwork and said, "Ah, greetings. Emissary Udina said you would be coming by. You're looking for Vakarian, right?"

"Yes," Shepard said, taken aback by, and thankful for, the turian's rush to the point. "You know where he is?"

"I do," Chellick responded without preamble. "He is currently investigating a lead over at the med-clinic in the Zakera Ward. He didn't say what it was, only that it's time-sensitive. If you want to catch him, I'd hurry."

Well that was certainly attention grabbing. "Right, thanks," Shepard said with a nod. He turned to his squad. "You heard the man. Nihlus, lead the way. Double-time."

* * *

For once, Shepard was grateful the citizenry of the Citadel was so unused to seeing XCOM around. Aliens practically threw themselves out of the squad's path as they barreled through. Nihlus would periodically shout a warning, but to Shepard it seemed entirely unnecessary. No one on the street could possibly miss the bootfalls of three humans in full titan armor. Weighing in at almost 200 kilograms each, every step they took rang through the relatively tight walkways of the Zakera Ward like the beating of a gong. It was almost enough to cover the indignant voices that chased their backs. Alenko gave brief apologies when he could, but the rest resolutely ignored it, determined to catch up with Vakarian before his lead vanished.

Suddenly, Nihlus threw out a hand and skittered to a stop. Shepard tried to stop before plowing into the turian, but Rex, accompanied by the sharp whine of Vahlenite claws against whatever the Citadel used for flooring, nudged him from behind and sent him toppling forward. Nihlus spun out of his path without even looking and the commander went tumbling ass over teakettle. He slammed to a hard stop on his back, the sudden flare of pain along his spine telling him in no uncertain terms that he would be carrying an impressive bruise in a few hours. He craned his head to shoot a look at Nihlus and opened his mouth to complain but froze at the focused look on the Spectre's face.

"What is it?" he asked as he climbed to his feet, tension leaking into his body.

"The clinic is right there," Nihlus answered, pointing out a large metal door decorated with a collection of symbols Shepard couldn't identify a few blocks down the street. "But those doors are never closed. And the streets are empty." Shepard looked around in surprise at that. He hadn't even noticed. "Something is wrong." The spectre pinned Shepard with a look. "We need to be careful here. I fear Saren is attempting to cover his trail. Commander, assemble your team for insertion through the door and give me five minutes to get into position. On my signal, clear the room."

Shepard opened his mouth to protest, but the spectre vanished before he could get the second word out. He let out an explosive breath then muttered, "Yes sir, Spectre sir. Can I polish your boots while I'm at it?"

"Orders, Commander?" Alenko cut in before he could start building up steam. Shepard shook his head and let his umbrage go. Nihlus was used to being the top dog. He'd adjust eventually. Or Shepard would piledrive him. Either way worked, really.

"Right," Shepard turned to the lieutenant. "We'll do what he said. Rex, you're the bullet sponge, so you get to lead the way." Rex chuffed at him and nodded. "And remember, all of you, this is a clinic. Odds are good there's sick and wounded civvies inside. Check your fire and don't pull the trigger unless you're sure. Got it?"

His squad acknowledged the order, so he led them slowly and carefully over to the clinic's front door. He searched around for the activation switch and settled in to wait the last minute of Nihlus' requested five. Finally, the turian's voice came over the comm. "In position." A beat later, he continued, his voice tinged with a hint of relief. "Saren may not be involved after all, this looks like a robbery. I count five hostiles and the doctor, no patients. Go when ready."

Shepard nodded, despite Nihlus not being able to see it, and said, "On three. One. Two. Three!"

As he began the final word, Shepard thumbed the door's switch, instantly retracting the metal door. By the time he finished the word, the door was completely open and Rex was charging through the space it had once occupied. The inhabitants of the room, four turians, a krogan and a female batarian, all whirled to face the intruders. The batarian, the clinic's doctor judging by the fact she was the only one not wearing some kind of armor, took one look at the humans and shrieked loudly as she threw herself away from the door and straight into one of the turians, sending both tumbling to the floor.

"Drop your weapons!" Shepard barked, the humans each covering a different turian while Rex growled dangerously at the krogan. The turians froze uncertainly, but the Krogan charged at the door with a bellowing roar. Rex met his charge with an answering bark and angry snarl. Moments before the two were to collide, Rex danced to the side and his jaws lashed out in a vicious bite, tearing a chunk the size of a basketball from the krogan's leg. The overgrown lizard's warcry changed to a bellow of pain and the leg collapsed, dragging him to his knees. Rex catapulted into his back, sending the krogan sprawling on his front.

Five hundred kilograms of angry robot landed on the krogan's hump, smashing through its armor and pulping the flesh underneath with a bloody squelch. The krogan roared again, a mix of pain, humiliation, and white hot rage lending strength to its voice. One enormous, three-fingered hand was placed on the ground and the lizard heaved. Rex went flying as the krogan flipped over onto its back. At the same time, the still-standing turians seemed to realize their predicament and opened fire on Rex, the humans in the doorway, and everything in their general vicinity.

Plasma lanced out in answer, and three of the turians died instantly as flesh boiled away from bone. An instant later, the krogan was back on its feet and charging straight at Rex. The dog growled, a low, vibrating sound that reached deep into Shepard's bones, and answered with his own charging leap. The two slammed together with a mighty clash. Vahlenite claws tore into the krogan's chest armor and meaty fists pounded the dog's armored skin as they wrestled. Finally, Rex twisted out of the krogan's grasp and his maw lashed out. A sickening crunch echoed around the room and the lizard collapsed on its back, nearly the entire front half of his skull simply gone.

Rex climbed off the corpse, bits and pieces of scaly flesh and yellow blood dropping from his jaws, and turned to glare at the last turian. The last of the thugs had returned to his feet and grabbed the doctor in a death grip, one wildly shaking hand holding a gun to her head. "B-b-b-b-back!" he shouted shakily. "G-get away or I blow this bitch's head open!"

Shepard waved a hand at his squad, who slowly and carefully lowered their weapons. "You don't want to do that," he said, carefully affecting a tone of urbane reasonability. Damnit, where was Nihlus when he was needed? "You _really_ don't want to do that."

"O-oh yea?" the thug said, his panic making his voice high and shrill. "And why not? It's not like this can get any worse!"

Shepard froze as an idea, a horrible, wonderful idea occurred to him. Maybe that title could actually do some good for once. "I wouldn't be so sure of that," he said aloud, still carefully maintaining his 'I know what I'm doing and you should listen to me' facade. "I heard the Carnifex of Khar'shan is on the Citadel today." The thug froze, animal panic overtaking any sense of reason. The batarian doctor gave out a low, terrified moan. Her form visibly shaking in her captor's grasp. "He doesn't take well to kidnappers or hostage takers. Believe me."

"B-bullshit!" the turian spit out a long moment of indecision later. "He's a myth! Something you spirits-cursed humans cooked up!"

Williams chuckled darkly while Rex chuffed a low snort, their derision of that sentiment clear. "Really?" Shepard asked, then checked to ensure Alenko and Williams were covering him. He reached for his helmet once he was sure, quickly pulling it off. When he got his first breath of the Citadel's air, he asked, "You sure about that?" The thug began to quiver and made low, feeble sounds deep in his throat. He recognized the commander then. Shepard pasted a wide, vicious, insane grin onto his lips. A brief thought brought a stream of psionic light flaring around his upraised hand. "Now... why don't you let her go?"

The turian released the doctor like she had the plague and bolted for the back door like the hounds of hell were chasing him. A pair of gunshots rang out and he collapsed to the floor in a growing puddle of blue blood. The humans whirled to face their origin as a pair of new turians entered the scene from opposite sides of the room, only to relax when they recognized one of them as Nihlus and the other as wearing the C-SEC uniform.

As the pair approached, Shepard slipped his helmet back on and turned to the doctor. "Are you alright, ma'am?" She stared at him in abject shock. He cocked his head slightly. "What?"

"Y-you saved me?" she half said, half asked. When he nodded, she started giggling uncontrollably. Shepard felt his eyebrow climb as she started gasping for breath, half-formed mutters escaping from her. All he could make out were the words 'Carnifex' and 'saved' repeated over and over again. He sent a helpless look at Williams, who shrugged in return.

Alenko stepped forward and said, "Let me calm her down, Commander. It looks like you're needed over there." He pointed at the turians, who were talking in low tones off to the side. Shepard nodded and walked over to the pair.

Nihlus noticed his approach instantly and broke out of his conversation with the other turian. "Good job, Commander," he said, sincere respect in his tone. "You handled the situation well. Your resolution of the hostage situation was inspired." Shepard just nodded. He was unsure how he felt about that particular tactic himself, but it had certainly worked. Nihlus then waved a taloned hand at the new turian. "This is Garrus Vakarian, one of the C-SEC detectives assigned to the investigation into Saren. We were just discussing the case."

"I see," Shepard said, turning to examine Vakarian. He stood roughly the same height as Nihlus, but where Nihlus' skin was a dark red, Garrus' was a mottled grey and white color. Dark blue swathes of facepaint swept back from under his eyes, all the way along his upper mandibles and tracing the back half of his lower mandibles. "Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard," he said as he extended his hand. The turian returned his regard with a gaze somewhere between excited and intrigued and uncertainly grasped his forearm. Shepard returned the gesture with a sheepish grin and shook. Close enough.

"Good to meet you, Commander," Garrus said eagerly. "Your reputation precedes you. I'm looking forward to working with you."

Someone on the Citadel actually _liked_ his reputation? There's a first time for everything, Shepard thought amusedly. "Same," he replied, trying to keep his amusement out of his voice. "Do you have anything on Saren?"

"You bet," Garrus answered instantly. "I heard some rumors about a quarian with intel on Saren and the Geth. I'm not sure what it is, but Saren sent a hit squad after her, so it has to be good. I had just tracked her to this clinic when our friends here showed up." He waved a hand at the scattered corpses. "Good thing you arrived when you did, Commander. Much longer and the good doctor would be dead."

Shepard nodded, grateful for the timing as well. "Let's go see what the doctor has to say then," he said, and the trio made their way over where a currently helmet-less Alenko had calmed her down and got her sitting on one of the beds. When they drew near, he coughed gently.

The woman looked up and jumped in surprise. She shot a panicked look at Alenko, who smiled and gently said, "Relax. You're safe now. My friends here," he drew her attention to Garrus in particular. She followed his directions and seemed to slump in place upon seeing the C-SEC uniform. "Just need some questions answered. Can you do that?"

She nodded jerkily. "Y-yes." She looked back up at the turians and Shepard, her gaze lingering on the C-SEC badge on Garrus' chest. "What do you need to know?"

Nihlus and Shepard looked at each other, nodded, and pushed the officer forward, silently telling him to ask the questions. Garrus coughed gently and spoke. "According to my information, a young quarian girl was seen coming out of this clinic late last night. Do you have any information on where she may have gone?"

The doctor tensed, all four eyes wide. She glanced at Shepard before shooting a scared look at Alenko, of all people. She started at the lieutenant for a brief moment and Shepard could have sworn he saw an infinitesimally small nod from the man. She looked away abruptly. Shepard followed her gaze to one of the charred turian bodies on the floor. She drew in a shuddering breath and said in a scared voice, "If I tell you, they'll kill me." She turned a desperate stare on Garrus and finished in a rush. "That's why these thugs were here! To keep me quiet! Get me witness protection and I'll tell you everything!"

"Done," Garrus said without a second's thought. "Now, where did she go? And how do these goons fit into it?"

"The quarian, she wouldn't give me her name, has information on Saren. He's hunting her," she started shakily. "That's how she got hurt. She's trying to sell the information to the Shadow Broker in return for protection. I sent her to Fist, then these thugs came in and threatened to kill me if I told you."

"Who's Fist?" Shepard asked.

Garrus answered him. "Fist is a human that moved onto the Citadel a few years back, looking for work outside of the Coalition. He was a minor psionic talent trying to make a credit. You know the drill. His record was clean so we let him." Shepard nodded. That story wasn't terribly rare since contact. Citadel Space paid good money for those with psionic talents. "Then the Shadow Broker got their claws in him. There's no proof of course, but he quickly established himself in the underworld as the Broker's point of contact in the Zakera Ward."

"And now he's trying to kill doctors," Shepard said. "But why?"

"Because he has betrayed the Shadow Broker," Nihlus answered calmly. All eyes snapped over to him. "The Broker put out a contract for Fist's elimination a few hours ago," he explained. "It is likely Fist has joined Saren, or whoever was truly behind Eden Prime, and is trying to eliminate the trail."

"Damn," Shepard bit out angrily. "Where can we find him?"

"He owns a bar called Chora's Den here in the wards. It's about twenty minutes away from the clinic," Garrus answered.

"Lead the way," Shepard ordered. "We don't have time to waste."

* * *

The run to Chora's Den was uneventful. The area around the large building, however, was anything but. Twisted remains of half a dozen guards, two turians, three batarians, and one in too many pieces to easily identify, were strewn all over the path leading into the bar. Blood painted the broken door, which had been twisted almost entirely out of its mooring. Garish neon lighting shown from the advertisements overhead, turning the gore into a multicolored sludge that was almost painful to look at. The sound of ongoing combat echoed from within the building, the fierce roar of a powerful shotgun supported by the staccato rhythm of assault rifles caressing their ears.

"By the spirits," Garrus whispered softly as they approached. "What happened here?"

"The Shadow Broker's assassin has arrived," Nihlus said dispassionately, voice sure. "Come. Time is of the essence." The Spectre suited action to words and shot through the gaping entryway.

The rest of the group followed quickly into the bar-cum-charnel-house. Bodies were strewn behind overturned tables, the bar, and even on the dancers' stage. Blood and viscera ran in thick streams over nearly every horizontal surface Shepard could see. He stepped forward carefully, his footing unsteady on the bloodslicked tile, trying to catch up with the turian Spectre.

Nihlus had shot ahead, bracing himself against the wall beside something that might once have been a doorway. The bent and twisted steel plate embedded in the opposite wall only reinforced that conclusion. Shepard swiftly made his way to join Nihlus on the opposite side of the opening, the rest of the crew settling into firing positions behind them. More bloody corpses lay shattered and broken through the hallway beyond, until the path made a sharp turn, hiding the far end from their sight.

"Alenko, what's going on in there?" he called out.

A pulse of psionic energy flowed from the c-psi and he reported, "Past the hall is a small office. Three targets, two krogan and a human, probably Fist. The krogan are fighting and the human is trying to get away."

"Useful ability," Nihlus commented idly, his tone almost impressed. At the same time, Shepard flicked a hand sign out and surged through the opening, the humans right on his heels. The turians, caught flat-footed by virtue of not knowing the signals, were only an instant behind them.

"Yea, no shit," Shepard said hurriedly. As they reached the bend, he barked, "We can't let Fist get away. I'll handle the krogan, the rest of you make sure Fist doesn't go anywhere."

Various acknowledgements came back the same second Shepard rounded the corner and blitzed into the room, a psionic corona filling the air with eerie purple light. The room had been trashed. The probably once impressive desk had been flipped on its side and thrown against the wall hard enough to shatter. Decorations, paintings, and small pieces of furniture were strewn all around the room in various stages of disarray. A lone human dug through the shattered remnants of the desk, clearly looking for something and only adding to the mess. To top off the scene, huge dents, some over a foot deep and thrice that wide, had been pounded into the walls.

Shepard's attention was more taken by the pair of krogan in the middle of the room however. One of them, wearing red armor and a bright red crest crisscrossed with vibrant scars, held his bloodied and beaten opponent in a hold vaguely reminiscent of a human headlock, his offhand gripping the rim of his victim's crest. An enormous shotgun lay on the floor at his feet.

Moments before Shepard came through the door, the red krogan loosed a low, undulating cry and _pulled_. Shepard watched in horrified fascination as the beaten krogan's crest was torn off in a geyser of orange blood. The victor let his enemy's body fall, then carefully, almost gently, set the bony crest on its chest.

Then he was struck from the side by a psionic punch that bodily picked him up and slammed him into the wall multiple meters behind him. He bellowed angrily as Shepard finished his charge into the room, the rest of the squad trailing in behind him. Shepard slid to a stop a few meters away from the krogan in a flare of psionic light, while the others took up positions around Fist.

"Hah!" the thug shouted in triumph. "You'll have to do better than that Urdnot!" He started to stand up, only for the butt of a plasma rifle to clock him, sending him sprawling.

"Freeze!" Williams barked, aiming the business end of the rifle at him this time.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" he shouted indignantly. "I'll have your badge you in-" He cut himself off mid-rant, his eyes going wide. "XCOM," he whispered as he realized, probably for the first time in years, that he was out of his depth.

The krogan chuckled lowly. "Figures," he said a few moments later in a voice that sounded like he regularly gargled with gravel. He tried to pry himself off of the wall, but a brief flare of psionics pushed him right back. The krogan turned a baleful glare on the commander. His eyes widened in surprise before a predatory grin split his lips. Before he could speak though, Nihlus stepped up beside Shepard and captured the krogan's attention. "Kryik," he said with a relaxed nod.

"Wrex," Nihlus returned the gesture. "This man has information we require. You can go when we're done."

Shepard's psionics slipped slightly in surprise, allowing the krogan to settle fully on the ground before he could re-establish his grip. "Nihlus? You know this guy?"

"Yes, Shepard. I have worked with him in the past," the Spectre said. "His name is Urdnot Wrex, and he is a mercenary of some repute. He has proven himself a useful ally to me."

Shepard sent a pointed look at the trashed office and the dead krogan in the middle of the room. "So it would seem." He pushed the krogan against the wall again and glared at him. "Stay put or I will be forced to hurt you."

Wrex gave him a toothy grin. "Give it your best shot, Carnifex. You may just make for a half-decent fight."

Shepard scowled, but did not rise to the bait. He shook his head and dismissed the krogan, confident he could stop Wrex before he could do any real damage. He walked up to Fist instead, crouched down in front of him and asked, "Where's the quarian?"

"What quarian?" Fist asked, in a surprisingly convincing tone of confusion. Shepard shot a look at Alenko, who shook his head.

"We don't have time for this," he muttered. He sighed heavily. "Let's establish some ground rules for this discussion. Rule number one: You won't lie to me." Fist started sputtering protests and insisting his innocence, but Shepard talked right over it. At the same time, one of Fist's hands was pulled out from under him in a cloud of purple light. "Rule number two: If rule number one is followed, I won't do this." Abruptly, one of his fingers bent backwards, the top of it meeting the back of his hand.

Fist started screaming in agony while Shepard looked on impassively, carefully trying to hide his distaste. After a few entirely too long seconds, shock settled in and the man slowly quieted. When he looked back up, fear filled his eyes. "Now, where is the quarian?"

"S-she came to me this morning," he stuttered out. His voice gained strength as he continued. "The stupid bitch thought she could get a face-to-face with the Shadow Broker." He chuckled bitterly. "No one gets a face-to-face with the Shadow Broker. Not even me." A demented grin touched his features. "But she didn't know that. I told her I'd set a meeting up, but when she shows up, it'll be Saren's men waiting for her."

Shepard leaned in and growled dangerously, purple light flaring in his eyes. "Where and when?" Fist cowered from the renewed aggression, whatever courage telling his story had given him evaporating instantly.

"Twenty minutes from now! A back alley in the wards!" Fist practically shouted. "Two blocks ringward of the markets!"

"I know the place Commander," Garrus stepped in then. He shot a disgusted look at Fist. "But we need to hurry. We'll barely make it if we leave now."

"Right." Shepard's fist lashed out and sent the criminal into unconsciousness. Turning to the rest of the group, he said, "Let's go."

As he turned away, a shotgun roared and Fist's body burst like a wet sack, painting the wall behind it crimson. Shepard whirled to face the source of the shot, only to find Wrex in the process of holstering his weapon. The krogan stared down the barrels of five rifles, at least one of which capable of incinerating him in an instant, and the most powerful currently living d-psi in existence without the slightest hint of concern. "I'm coming with you."

Shepard's faculties came screeching to a halt. "What? No, wait, what the fuck was that?!"

"I accepted a contract to kill Fist," he said, utterly calm despite the squad's increasing agitation. "I _don't_ leave jobs half done." The slightest of smiles touched his lips. "And that was my last one, so I'm coming with you."

"You just murdered a captive in cold blood," Shepard bit out angrily. "Why the _fuck_ would I let you?!"

"Why?" Wrex asked in return. "Why _not_?! The Carnifex of Khar'shan is out hunting for Saren Arterius and his army of Geth." A bloodthirsty grin spread across his face. "A storm is coming Shepard, and you will be right in the middle of it. You need all the help you can get. And I might even get a good fight out of it."

Nihlus stepped up to the commander. "Commander, I have worked with him extensively. Wrex is a valuable ally, and he _will_ honor his word. I recommend you bring him along." Well wasn't that just spectacular. The Spectre trusts him so the murderous lizard is all good.

Shepard stopped himself before he could really start and took a deep breath. The meditation techniques he had practiced earlier sliding to the forefront of his mind and helping him calm down. He activated the human squad's private comm and asked, "Alenko?"

"They think they're telling the truth, Commander," he replied. "Beyond that, I'm really not sure."

"Wonderful," Shepard said curtly. He stewed on it for a brief moment, before abruptly remembering that if he wanted to save the quarian, he didn't have time to waste. To the rest of the room, he said "We don't have time to argue. We need to get to that alley ten minutes ago. Garrus, lead the way." He turned to stare Wrex straight in the krogan's massive eye and continued, as threateningly as he could, "Follow along if you want, but if you cause problems, I will tear you apart."

Wrex smiled, a wide, dangerous grin full of blocky teeth. "I thought you wanted to save the quarian. Better get moving then, Carnifex." Shepard made a wordless noise of frustration and turned away, following a visibly concerned Garrus out of Chora's Den.

* * *

"He's late" a young, female quarian muttered angrily under her breath. The girl paced impatiently through the alleyway Fist had directed her to, eyes roaming constantly for threats. The Shadow Broker was supposed to have arrived five minutes ago. What was he playing at? She didn't have time for this! Her shoulders shook in repressed emotion. _Keelah_, what did she get herself into?

The sudden clatter of footsteps sounded from behind her, nearly sending her into a panic. She spun around immediately, her momentum nearly sending her crashing to the floor. Two turians flanked by a trio of armored salarians stood in what she could have sworn was empty space not twenty seconds before, conveniently blocking the only way out of the alleyway. One hand drifted to the shotgun holstered in the small of her back as one of the turians stepped forward.

"Do you have the evidence?" he said smoothly, stepping directly into her personal space without a second thought.

"What? Where's the Shadow Broker?" she asked. "Where's Fist?"

The turian's talon slid along her helmet and caressed her body, sending shivers of disgust roaring through her veins. "They'll be here," he said with a leer. Over his shoulders, she could catch glimpses of the salarians slowly and carefully pulling out weapons. A sudden, sick certainty formed in her chest. There wasn't going to be a meeting with the Shadow Broker. "Where's the-" His talon grabbed her chest and her hand lashed out, batting away the offending limb.

"No way, you sick _bosh'tet_!" she spat. She started trying to back away. "The deal's off." The turian shot her a look that was equal parts furious and sick glee and she _knew_ she was going to die here. _Keelah_, why did this keep happening to her? Had she displeased the ancestors somehow?

Her eyes darted to the salarians, who now weren't even attempting to hide their weapons. She could feel her legs tremble even as she started to take cautious steps back. The turian who had stayed back voiced a low sadistic chuckle. "Saren sends his regards, Quarian," he called. Oh. Oh _Keelah_. Wasn't an incinerator enough to deal with these _bosh'tets_?!

Images flashed behind her eyes, people and places she would never see again. The Migrant Fleet, Auntie Raan, Father. The last stayed firmly in her mind and she could practically hear him yelling at her for being scared here. There's only five of them after all. The sheer absurdity of the thought broke through her fear, giving just enough room for the stubborn will her father had equally praised and condemned. She was _not_ going to die in a back alley like some Vorcha whore!

The fact that her hands were shaking hard enough that her gun was making an audible clanking noise against her back had no bearing on that decision. Oh _Keelah_ she really was gon- Wait, that wasn't entirely from her, she realized a second later. Her attackers seemed to realize it at the same instant she did. The turian near her turned to the mouth of the alley to see what it was and she saw her chance. The hand on her gun whipped around and the shotgun roared, straight into the _bosh'tet_'s side.

He let out a vicious cry and stumbled back, even as his kinetic barrier absorbed the worst of it. Her free hand swiped a mine from her belt and launched it at the group near the mouth of the alley as she threw herself away from him. The mine exploded a second later, disrupting all four of her other attackers' shields.

The turian caught his footing and whipped out his own gun, a pistol whose barrel seemed to take up the entire alley to the young quarian. His finger tightened on the trigger but a streak of purple slammed into his side and tore his arm, and a third of his chest, from his torso, sending the limb, with the weapon still clutched in its grasp, skittering deeper into the alleyway. The turian collapsed like a deactivated Geth before her shocked gaze. What on Rannoch was that?

Her query was answered as a krogan and some kind of robotic varren pulled her attention away from the bloody corpse. The duo charged into the alley screaming incoherent war cries. The krogan's shotgun, to hers what a dreadnought was to a frigate, filled the alley with an echoing roar that tore the upper torso of its shieldless, salarian target into finger-sized pieces. The varren was no less effective, a sickly green bolt of something she had never seen before spearing the surviving turian and disintegrating his entire chest. The now separated arms fell to the ground beside the collapsing lower body, steam wafting in heavy sheets from all three pieces. An instant later, two more bursts of the same sickly green flew in and utterly destroyed the last two salarians.

And just like that, the entire squad of assassins was dead. She could only stare in abject shock as their place was swiftly taken by her rescuers. In addition to the krogan and the robot, there were two turians, an asari in a full-body suit of armor of a type she could not recognize and two other aliens she had never seen before, both wearing armor eerily reminiscent of the asari's. One of the new aliens stepped forward, and her shotgun immediately came to bear on him, bringing him up short. She felt a brief jolt of pride in the fact that the weapon was held steady despite the tremors running through her body. The alien swung its enormous white and sickly green rifle over its shoulder and held out a hand to the side.

When the people behind it put their weapons away, she could not find the words to describe her relief. Then the alien spoke. "I'm Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard, XCOM. What's your name?"

She started, letting her weapon point at the ground. XCOM? So that's what humans look like. A small, silly grin graced her hidden lips. Keenah totally would've lost that bet. A second later the human coughed gently, tearing her from her thoughts. "What? Oh, right," she said sheepishly. "My name is Tali, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Thank you, for saving my life."

"You're welcome," he said easily. "Were you hurt in the fight?"

"No," she breathed heavily. "Thanks to your arrival." She paused suddenly as something occurred to her. "Not to sound ungrateful, but _why_ did you arrive?"

"We have been searching for you," one of the turians stepped up beside Commander Shepard then. The human's head turned to the turian's and she, thanks to years of being forced to read body language through full enviro-suits, could tell he was glaring. Wait... Commander Shepard? Why was that name so familiar? The turian's voice interrupted her thoughts a second later. "Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre," he said by way of introduction. "We have reason to believe you have information regarding the current whereabouts or objectives of Saren Arterius." Tali's eyes went wide. A Spectre! Praise the ancestors! Surely a Spectre could protect her from Saren.

"Y-yes!" she stuttered out. She tried, and partially succeeded, to calm herself down. "I do, but here is not the place to share it." She tilted her helmet at the still-cooling corpses. "It's not safe."

Nihlus attempted to speak, but silenced himself awkwardly as Shepard stepped before him. "Right. We'll go to the human embassy and discuss it there." He turned to the Spectre. "Nihlus, the Council will want to hear this. Do you mind informing them and getting them to phone into the embassy?"

"As you wish, Commander." Nihlus' mandibles pulled together into a frown, but he turned and disappeared onto the street. Shepard turned back to Tali, his body language relaxing for the first time since she'd first seen him.

"Come on, we'll keep you safe." His helmet tilted and she was sure he wore a grin underneath. "I promise." And she believed him.

* * *

"Ah, Commander Shepard, welcome back." Emissary Udina said as the group, minus Nihlus, walked into the embassy. The emissary turned away from his conversation with Captain Anderson. "I trust your... activities in the wards proved useful?" A brow rose sharply as he beheld the group's alien contingent. "And that your companions are here for a reason?"

"Yes, to both," Shepard answered. He gestured at Garrus and Wrex. "These two assisted in the investigation." He pointed at Tali. "And she has information on Saren and the Geth."

Udina's gaze moved to the quarian. "Interesting. We don't see many quarians around here," he mused aloud. "How did you come across it?"

"I was on my Pilgrimage," she answered quickly. "My rite of passage into adulthood."

"Pilgrimage?" Udina interrupted, his gaze sharp. "That is the first I've heard of it. What does it entail?"

"It is a tradition among my people. When we reach maturity, we are sent out into the galaxy to search for something, anything, that could aid the Migrant Fleet. When we find it, we bring it back to the Fleet to prove our worth."

"I see," Udina said absently. "Now, pl-" A gentle chime sounded out, interrupting the emissary. The emissary looked surprised for a moment, but mumbled an apology as he turned to the beeping terminal. "That's the Council's line. Excuse me."

He tapped a swift sequence onto a screen on his arm and holographic representations of all three Councillors and Nihlus appeared atop the terminal. "Emissary," Councillor Tevos said, no hint of her earlier umbrage in her face or tone. "Nihlus has informed us that you have found information on Saren."

"Yes Councillor," Udina confirmed. "We were just about to hear it." He gestured Tali forward. The girl stepped up, and Shepard decided to follow along, coming to a stop beside her as she addressed the Council.

"As I was saying," she began, clearly nervous. Shepard chuckled under his breath. She could stare down an alleyway full of assassins without issue, but put her in front of politicians and she starts shaking. "I was on my Pilgrimage. During my travels, I heard reports of Geth activity. They hadn't been seen outside the Perseus Veil since they drove my people into exile, so I got curious. I tracked a group of Geth to an uncharted world and waited for one to separate from its allies. Then I ambushed it and removed its memory core."

"Impossible," Councillor Valern interrupted. "The Geth wipe their memory cores when they are defeated." The other Councillors nodded, though Nihlus stayed silent.

"Our studies of the Geth defeated on Eden Prime confirm as much," Captain Anderson agreed. "How did you get anything?"

"My people created the Geth," Tali responded, sounding insulted, though Shepard couldn't tell if it was at the insinuation that she was lying or that she wasn't capable of it. "If you know what you're doing, and get a little lucky, small caches of data can be saved. Most of the data was lost, but I was able to salvage this sequence from its audio banks." She tapped her omnitool and a recording began to play.

"Eden Prime was a costly victory." Shepard's hands curled into fists. He recognized that voice. "But the beacon brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit."

"The Conduit?" Shepard wondered aloud. He turned a look on the salarian Councillor as he continued. "Does anyone have any idea what that is?"

"Unsure," Valern responded. His eyes darted around the room in the salarian gesture for heavy thought. "Could be any of several things. Or something completely new."

Anderson scowled. "The Conduit has _something_ to do with the beacon," he argued. "It's probably some kind of Prothean technology. But what?"

The Councillors descended into worried whispers, and Shepard could hear Alenko and Williams speculating behind him. "Um," Tali interrupted. "The recording was not finished."

Everyone in the room turned back to stare at her, and she seemed to shrink in on herself for a brief instant. A moment later, she rallied and brandished her omnitool.

"Eden Prime was a costly victory. But the beacon brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit." Saren's voice played again. A beat passed, then a brand new voice came out.

"And one step closer to the return of the Reapers." The new voice was feminine, and carried a hint of ancient wisdom few could match. Who the hell was that? And what in god's name are the Reapers?

"I don't recognize that second voice," Udina commented absently, clearly pondering the new information. "Nor do I recognize that term, 'Reapers'."

"According to the memory core," Tali explained. "The Reapers are a hyper-advanced machine race that existed 50,000 years ago. The Geth believe that they hunted the Protheans to extinction then they vanished."

Shepard froze at that and trained his full attention on the quarian. Could these Reapers be the Ethereals' ancient enemy?

Tali continued, unmindful of the present humans' sudden focus on her. "The Geth revere the Reapers as gods, the pinnacle of synthetic life. The Geth believe they are out there, somewhere, waiting for the appointed time to cleanse the galaxy of all sapient organic life. And that Saren is the prophet that will bring them back."

The humans present traded uneasy glances. "That is... unsettling news," Udina finally voiced what they were all thinking. He turned a determined gaze back to the Council. "Saren is a far greater threat than I had feared. At the end of the Ethereal War, we received a warning of a new, far more dangerous foe. These 'Reapers' sound very likely to be exactly that."

"You cannot be serious," Councillor Tevos said dismissively. "The Reapers are a myth, Emissary."

"Agreed," Sparatus concurred. "There is no evidence of their existence. If they had truly wiped out the Protheans, we would have found _something_ by now."

"That is possible," Udina admitted grudgingly. He clearly wasn't prepared to let it go that easily though. "It bears further investigation, however. Artificial Intelligences are not inclined to baseless religion."

"Even if it were true," Sparatus countered, his tone making his disdain for the idea clear. "The Reapers returning would not be in Saren's interests. What possible reason would an organic want to bring back the machines that wiped out all life in the galaxy? We should focus on the Conduit."

"And that brings us full circle," Captain Anderson interrupted before it could descend into an argument. "What is the Conduit?"

"Doesn't matter," Wrex spoke for the first time since leaving Chora's Den. "Saren wants it, that means we can't let him have it."

"He's right," Shepard said, drawing the room's attention away from the krogan. "Whatever Saren wants with the Conduit, people will die if he gets his hands on it." He panned his gaze around the room. "I _won't_ let that happen."

Wrex chuckled in honest mirth as the aliens in the room adopted looks of varying degrees of surprise and disbelief. "Commander Shepard is correct," Anderson agreed. "We have to find him. We know his goal. What else do we have?"

"I recognized that second voice," Councillor Tevos offered reluctantly. Shepard looked at her in surprise. He hadn't expected her to help at all, after her display in the Council chamber. "That was Matriarch Benezia."

"Who's she?" Shepard asked, the name unfamiliar.

"She is a matriarch, one of the eldest of my people," Tevos explained. "She is a powerful biotic, and she has many followers. She will make a formidable ally for Saren."

Udina looked up from the display on his arm then. "And she is our first lead to finding him," he announced, scowling fiercely. Shepard turned to look at him inquisitively. "I thought I recognized her name, so I ran a search on our databases. She has a daughter, Liara T'soni, who specializes in Prothean relics. She was asked to participate in an XCOM-funded Prothean research dig on the planet Therum in the Traverse."

"I will not allow you to drag her into this," Tevos interrupted angrily. "Her mother has fallen in with Saren, that is unfortunate, but she will not be held accountable." Valern and Sparatus moved beside her to wordlessly demonstrate their support.

"Peace, Councillors," Udina said, hands raised in the traditional gesture of surrender. "You did not let me finish. The protection team at the dig site reported the appearance of a Geth task force less than twenty minutes ago and has fallen silent. I believe Saren is looking to either silence or recruit her."

Sparatus nodded. "That would make sense." He turned to Nihlus. "Get to Therum and retrieve T'soni. She may know something."

"Yes Councillor," Nihlus said with a salute. He turned to Shepard. "I will meet you at your ship, Commander." Shepard nodded and the turian disappeared from the hologram.

"Commander," Councillor Tevos grabbed Shepard's attention. "We will be investigating Saren further. Any information we uncover relevant to the search for the Conduit will be forwarded to Nihlus."

"Thank you, Councillors," Shepard said with a bow. The holograms winked out, and he turned to leave. Tali stepped into his path, a determined set to her shoulders.

"Take me with you, Commander." Shepard had to give her credit for her audacity at least. "You saw me in the alley, you know what I can do."

"What?" he asked, taken aback by the request. "No, no way. I'm not bringing a kid into the battlefield. It's too dangerous."

"Saren is a danger to the entire galaxy," she countered. "If he succeeds, nowhere is safe." Her faceplate pointed right at him and he felt a piercing glare, the likes of which he hadn't seen for thirteen years. "I've spent the last day dealing with Saren's assassins, and I know the Geth better than anyone. I can help, Commander," she finished empathically.

A sudden flash of a small, eight year old girl suddenly overlapped with the quarian before his eyes. A low, slightly sad laugh bubbled out of him at the flash of memory. The quarian tilted her head, clearly baffled by his brief laughing fit. He shook his head. This girl wouldn't end the same way. He'd make sure of it.

"Fine, you can come," he conceded. "But you _will_ follow orders. Understand?"

"Yes, Commander," she chirped happily. "Thank you."

He shook his head, pointedly ignoring the way both Wrex and Rex were laughing at him. Captain Anderson caught his gaze with a pointed gesture. He responded with a curious look, but nodded. "Head to the _Normandy_, all of you," he ordered. "I need to talk to the Captain."

The squad filtered out quickly, until only Udina, Anderson, and Shepard remained. "Commander," Anderson began the discussion. "You are being given overall command of the _Normandy_. Pressly has been given the captaincy, and ordered to defer to you for all non-combat operational directives."

"What?" Shepard asked, surprised. "Why? What about you?"

Anderson's lips cocked up into a slight smile. "My skills will be put to better use with the Geth offensive, and you need to be able to call the shots if you're going to find Saren." He stepped up and placed a hand on the commander's shoulder. "Son, you're a great soldier, and I believe you will prove yourself an equally capable leader. We, _I_ am trusting the _Normandy_ to you because I believe you are the best, the only person for this job."

That vote of confidence left Shepard both stunned and elated. He had never expected that kind of trust in him. If he was brutally honest with himself, he didn't deserve it. He never had. What on Earth made them think he did?

"Captain, I-" he began, swallowing the lump in his throat. He needed to know. "I'm honored, but, but _why_?"

Anderson stared intently through the commander's visor, straight into his eyes. Something, some indefinable emotion, roiled deep in the captain's gaze, searing Shepard straight down to his soul. "I've been keeping an eye on you for a long time, Commander. Ever since Khar'shan. You've made mistakes. Lord knows, some of them have been atrocious," he began calmly. The fire in his gaze froze Shepard in place, consuming his entire world until nothing remained but the captain's voice and that deep, blazing flame. "But you have always accepted them. What's more, you have _learned_ from them. You have no idea how rare that is. You are a good man Commander, as well as a good soldier. It's time you had a chance to prove it, to yourself as well as the rest of the galaxy."

Shepard couldn't speak, could barely breath. The sheer conviction with which the captain spoke left no doubt in Shepard's mind that the man spoke the truth. He honestly believed it. And some part of Shepard, a small part he had believed long dead, wanted to believe it too. Determination swelled in his breast. He had forgotten what it felt like to have someone believing in him. Maybe, just maybe, he really could meet the captain's expectations. He swore then and there that he would do everything he could to do exactly that. "I, Thank you, Captain," he said finally, in a voice thick with emotion. "Th-"

"Touching. Utterly irrelevant, but touching," Udina's voice, dripping with sarcasm and no small amount of scorn, cut into the conversation. The sound was like a slap to Shepard, utterly destroying the mood of solemn dignity Anderson's impassioned speech had created. When the emissary continued, it only got worse. "Commander, I allowed your appointment because you have proven yourself capable of achieving results when operating under heavy restrictions. Nothing more. You get one chance. _Don't _prove me wrong."

Shepard scowled fiercely and Anderson leveled an angry glare on the man. "I won't, Emissary." You ass, he didn't say aloud. "Is there anything else?"

"One thing," Udina said, blithely ignoring Anderson's glare. "I will be starting an investigation into these 'Reapers'. If they really are the enemy the Ethereals sought to battle, we need to be prepared. Anything you find about them as you hunt for Saren would be appreciated."

Shepard scowled, fighting against the incredibly strong urge to be petty with the bureaucrat. A glance at Anderson, and a memory of the captain's speech, was enough for him to still the words inching towards his tongue. "I will sir," he said after the brief internal struggle. He looked between the two, ending on the still-visibly-fuming Anderson. "Anything else?"

"Just one," the captain said. "Find Saren. Find the son of a bitch, and kill him."


	12. Adventure Archaeology

**Chapter 11: Adventure Archaeology**

"Alright, listen up," Shepard said as he strode into the _Normandy_'s armory. He regarded the random mish-mash of aliens that were waiting for him inside. Through some sort of cosmic coincidence, this group formed the replacements for the soldiers lost on Eden Prime. A brief smile tugged at his lips. Almost despite himself, he hoped this ragtag team would come together into something great. It'd be exciting, if nothing else. "Since we left the Citadel, you have been under constant observation," he admitted shamelessly. He fought back the urge to pout when none of them so much as batted an eye at having been spied on for over a day. "In addition, we have been running extensive background checks on all of you. To my great surprise," he said with a pointed glance at Wrex. "All of you have passed."

Wrex chuckled lowly. "Sorry to disappoint, Carnifex."

Shepard scowled at the krogan. "Don't call me that," he snapped. Wrex's grin widened, utterly destroying the commander's hopes that that particular request would be obeyed. He sighed, one hand coming up to massage his temples. Why could he not just space the mercenary again? "Just for that, you get to go last." Looking up, he continued to the room at large. "As you have probably guessed, I called you here today to get you set up with some real weapons."

That piqued their interest. Even Wrex appeared, if not apologetic, then sober. "You mean..." Garrus trailed off, desperate hope clear in his tone.

Shepard felt a toothy grin split his lips. "I do," he said as he moved over to the nearest weapon rack on the wall. "Time for you guys to get some plasma weapons." He flipped open the door over the rack and pulled a standard plasma rifle out from inside. Smooth grey and white plates surrounded a gentle green glow in the core of the rifle, sweeping back in gentle curves all the way to the handle and trigger guard on the rear end.

He turned back to the aliens and hefted the rifle. "This is known as a T22 Plasma Rifle. It utilizes an Elerium power cell to create and fire a cluster of powerful, ionized gas with a powerful and intensely focused magnetic field. It's standard issue equipment to XCOM personnel."

He set it down on the table, inwardly laughing at the way Nihlus' gaze followed it. He turned back to the rack and pulled out the next weapon. "This," he hefted and primed the weapon so the baleful orange glow in its core cast his face in eerie shadows. "Is the T2015 Alloy Cannon. It fires Vahlenite flechettes with enough power to pierce over a meter of solid titanium. It's the preferred weapon of assault specialists."

"Vahlenite?" Tali spoke up as he finished. "What's that?"

He opened his mouth to answer but Nihlus beat him to it. "It is a superdense and superconductive, both thermal and electrical, material the Coalition discovered during the Ethereal War. Its most common military application is armor plating." His mandibles flexed in distaste. "We have been attempting to recreate it for some time now."

"What he said," Shepard said faintly, surprised the Spectre had known that much about it. "Though if you're wondering, we originally called it 'Alien Alloy' back in the Ethereal War." Tali nodded her understanding, so he set the shotgun on the table beside the plasma rifle and grabbed the next weapon. He carefully maneuvered the long rifle out of the cage and lifted it to his shoulder, aiming at the wall to the side and admittedly showing off a little with his preferred weapon. The butt fit easily into his shoulder and he sent a look through the attached scope. The wide, boxy barrel glowed a fierce, deadly green, filling the room with sepulchral light. "This beauty is the T40 Plasma Sniper Rifle. It is a more powerful version of the T22 with a maximum effective range of almost four kilometers and a payload nearly twice as powerful. It is my weapon of choice and, in the hands of a skilled marksman, is the ultimate choice for dealing long-range death."

Garrus made a low, mildly disturbing sound as he stared at the weapon in Shepard's hands. The turian's eyes never left it as the commander set it beside the previous two. Heh. One of them had made up their minds at least.

Shepard then moved to another cage on the rear wall of the room. This rack was almost twice the size of the previous, as was only fitting for its contents. He threw the doors opened and pulled out an enormous white and green monstrosity of a weapon. At over a meter long, and half that tall and across, the weapon dwarfed all three of the previous guns he had revealed. Its shape was almost akin to a massively upscaled plasma rifle, save for the four adornments on the front end. Each piece was a separate, fully functional plasma rifle, fused together in an unholy cross between a 21st century minigun and Ethereal technology.

He held the weapon aloft, presenting it for inspection to his rapt audience. "And this is the T134 Heavy Plasma. This weapon utilizes the cutting edge in rapid cooling and portable power generation technology. At its core, it is a plasma rifle but, unlike the T22 or the T40, this weapon is capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute. It will kill quite literally anything that is put in front of it." He paused for breath, surveying his audience. Their expressions, the ones he could see anyway, ran the gambit from barely controlled, savage glee to restrained interest. "Any questions?"

"Just one, Commander," Garrus said, his enthusiasm for the weapons absolutely clear. "Can I have a go with the T40?"

Shepard graced the turian with a wide, competitive grin. "A soldier after my own heart," he said. He finished the comment with a challenging lilt. "I'll have to see if you can stack up in some simulations."

"You're on," Garrus replied eagerly, his eyes burning with excitement. "Name the time and place."

"Once we're done here, I'll put you through your paces Vakarian. Have no fear of that."

"Looking forward to it, Shepard." The turian moved over to the sniper rifle on the table and hefted it, testing its weight. "I can't wait to see what she can do," he muttered under his breath.

Shepard grinned. Hopefully the turian could keep up with him. It had been a while since he'd had a rival. Alas, work came first. He turned to the quarian of the group. "What would you prefer, Tali?"

She hoisted the alloy cannon she had picked up while he had been distracted. "I've always preferred a good shotgun." He smiled at the image she presented. The cannon was the size of her torso. The Geth wouldn't know what hit them.

"Myself as well, Commander," Nihlus spoke up then. "If I may?" he asked, stepping past Shepard and leaning into the rack. He came out with another alloy cannon and moved to the corner of the room to get used to it.

The commander turned to the krogan who had waited surprisingly patiently through the explanations. On second thought, Shepard mused, it wasn't _that_ surprising. It was a weapons briefing after all. Though his prolonged silence was unexpected. He cocked an eyebrow, eying the enormous shotgun attached to Wrex's back and asked, "You want one too?"

"No," the krogan said dismissively. He stomped past Garrus, straight to the heavy plasma. "I'll take this one." The shivers that suddenly crawled down Shepard's spine were most definitely not caused by the krogan's demented grin. That was either the best or the worst possible choice, Shepard couldn't decide which.

"Excellent choices," EDI chimed in. "Unfortunately, we do not have any suits of Titan Armor for your species at this time. If you would like to request one, please contact either myself or Engineer Adams."

Distracted acknowledgements came from the aliens as they poured over their new toys. Shepard cocked an eyebrow in surprise. "You're all being surprisingly accepting of EDI," he commented aloud. "I had expected there to be problems."

"Why would there be?" Tali asked, confused. "She's been nice enough. Though I would like to meet her in person."

Huh. That would explain that. Damnit, he had really hoped someone else would explain this. "Well," he began, struggling to find a way to phrase it diplomatically. "Uh... the thing is... you se-"

"What Commander Shepard is attempting to say," EDI interjected abruptly. "Is that I am an Artificial Intelligence."

Tali froze. "What," she asked, her voice utterly devoid of emotion.

"I am the first human AI, and I have been connected into nearly every aspect of the _Normandy_. In combat, I am charged with controlling the ACV complement as well as the cyberwarfare suite," EDI explained. "I am looking forward to working alongside you."

"That's what I thought you said," Tali replied weakly. She looked to Shepard, even as she hugged her new alloy cannon to her chest like a security blanket. "Commander," she continued, sounding faint. "I'm going to go freak out now."

"Wh-" was all Shepard managed to get out before the quarian let out a piercing wail and bolted from the room, nearly plowing _through_ the armory's door. She disappeared down the hallway, her terrified screams echoing back to Shepard's increasingly bemused ears. He waited a beat for the echoes to die off, then sighed. "Yea, that was more what I expected."

Wrex burst into a deep, belly laugh, one hand lifting from his heavy plasma to hold his gut. Shepard cocked an eyebrow at the krogan. "It doesn't bother you?"

"Bah," he replied after he got his laughter under control. "As long as she doesn't try to kill me, she's fine."

"Thank you Wrex," EDI's voice rang out. "The sentiment is appreciated."

"What about you two?" Shepard asked with a pointed glance at the turians.

Nihlus shrugged. "I had expected it. The Council was aware of XCOM's deal with Synthetic Insights," he explained. "When I first spoke to her, I suspected this was the case. As long as she does not interfere with the mission, I can accept it. Beyond that, she is your problem."

"I can't say I'm wholly comfortable with it," Garrus said when Shepard turned his gaze on him. "But I'll give it a shot." He looked up, clearly searching for EDI's camera in the room. "I'd like to know more before making any judgments."

"Thank you, Garrus," she said. "If you have any questions, please ask."

"Fair enough," Shepard conceded at the same time. "That's all I can ask. Just be aware that EDI is part of the crew, and afforded all of the rights that come with it. Understand?" They nodded, though Nihlus' was clearly more reluctant. "Good. There's a training range through that door." He pointed at a closed door at the rear of the armory. "You have the two days we're in transit to use the dummy weapons and simulators in there to get used to your new toys. Be ready for anything when we get to Therum." He sighed. Now for the rest of the conversation. "I'll go see if I can find Tali."

* * *

Low red light filled Shepard's vision as he climbed deeper into the bowels of the _Normandy_ in search of Tali. He had followed EDI's reports on the quarian's last known location down to the engineering deck and had swiftly gotten lost in the cramped maze of maintenance tunnels. He ducked under a pipe, muttering imprecations on all starship designers under his breath, and emerged into yet another intersection with three possible routes.

"If I was a scared quarian trying to hide from the omnipresent AI, which direction would I take?" he mused aloud, trying to catch any sign of Tali's passage down the passageways. They all looked the same, so he chose one at random with a shrug. "That's as good as any other," he muttered as he slipped into the low walkway.

A loud bang echoed down all three passages and he stumbled back rubbing his head and cursing loudly for over a minute. A soft voice broke into his tirade, sending him whirling around to face the source. "'Fuckmothering son of a sectoid'?" Tali said amusedly as she climbed out of one of the tunnels he hadn't chosen.

"It's true," he replied defensively, finally letting the hand cradling the new bump on his head fall to his side. "Whoever designed these maintenance tunnels needs to be fed to a muton berserker."

"Or you just need to be less clumsy, Shepard," she countered flippantly. She patted the wall affectionately and her voice turned wistful. "These remind me of the Migrant Fleet, of home. Every ship in the fleet is filled to capacity, there's barely any room to move. Every ship I've been on since I left just felt too big, too empty. It's nice down here."

His scowl softened slightly. "Alright," he allowed. "Maybe they should only be fed to a sectoid." She laughed lightly, and he smiled. At least she wasn't panicking anymore. He let her continue for a few moments, but had to bring the conversation back on track. "You seem to have recovered from your 'freak out' well enough."

"Yes, well," she began, clearly flustered. "I got distracted. There's so much to see down here, and it's all so new!" she gushed. She waved a hand in the vague direction of the tunnel she had come out of. "Like the element zero drive core down there. I've never seen anything like it! How did you get such a large core in a vessel this small? Is it really connected to an elerium generator? What effect does the elerium have on the ship's FTL travel? Ho-"

"Breathe, Tali," Shepard interrupted with a fond smile before she could keep rambling. "Slow down and take a breath. I can't answer anything if you keep asking new questions."

"Oh. Right. Of course," she said embarassedly. "Sorry. I tend to babble when I get excited. Or nervous. I keep talking, and can't stop. Just talk, talk, talk until the problem goes away. It doesn't always work, but I do it anyway, like right now. I really should just stop talk-"

"Tali," he said, his voice turning mildly stern. He stared straight at the lightly glowing dots on her visor. Hopefully those were actually her eyes. "Relax." She stopped talking abruptly and her head bobbed in acknowledgement. She heaved noisy breaths and slumped against the wall behind her. He sent her his best effort at a comforting grin. "Better?"

"Yes," she answered after a long pause. "Thank you, Shepard."

"Anytime. Now, we need to talk about EDI."

She tensed visibly, and the glowing points on her visor bobbed. When she spoke, her voice was brittle. "Commander, I realize I am a guest on your ship," she began. "I have no right or authority to be demanding changes. All I will say on the matter is that I believe your people have made a grave error. AIs cannot be trusted. It _will_ turn on you. It is only a question of when."

"Your opinion is noted." Shepard's scowl made a return, this time aimed at the quarian. "I'm not asking you to like her, but she is a member of the crew. You _will_ treat her with the same respect you extend to any organic crewmember while you are on this ship. Understand?"

"It's a threa-" she began, but stopped abruptly as Shepard closed in with her.

"Tali, I like you, and I think you can be an powerful asset, but I will not hesitate to leave you at the next port if you push me," he said angrily, eyes flashing purple. "AIs are sapient beings, with everything that entails. I won't tolerate that kind of idiocy on my team."

"Idiocy?!" she shrieked. "Synthetics nearly drove my people to extinction, and they have forced us to live our _entire lives_ in environment suits! EDI will turn on you the instant it thinks it can get away with it. You've put the entire ship at ris-"

Shepard's right fist lashed out, going straight over her left shoulder and slamming into the bulkhead behind her like a hammer on a gong. The clang echoed in the enclosed space into a deafening cacophony. She shrunk in on herself, pressing herself further against the wall. An instant later, the quarian was replaced by Jenny, the little girl similarly cowering away from him in abject terror. His thoughts came screeching to a halt, even as his mind rejected the image in favor of reality.

The fierce, ugly and furious face reflected by Tali's visor sent a sick feeling spiraling into his gut. He stumbled back, suddenly incredibly nauseous. He fell back against the opposite wall and collapsed to the floor, staring at nothing. His mind refused to banish that wretched, horrifying picture. "'m sorry," he mumbled, not sure which girl he was talking to. "I am so sorry."

"Commander," Tali said anxiously as rose to her full height. He jumped, hitting his head on a pipe right above his head with a yelp. She giggled, and the tension between them eased slightly. He held up a hand as she tried to continue.

"I was way out of line," he said, his voice thickly apologetic. He carefully rose to his feet as he continued. "I don't have the words to say how sorry I am. It won't happen again."

"I'll try to get along with EDI," she volunteered nervously. "I won't pretend to like it, but I can be professional."

"It's alright," he sighed tiredly. He wasn't willing to re-open that argument. "As long as you don't try to kill each other, we can make it work."

"I can do that," she said with a nod. Suddenly she turned sheepish. "Now let's move on to a better topic. Like how do we get out of here?" Shepard raised an eyebrow. That was an interesting change of topic. "I was trying to get back to the crew deck when you found me. I ran in here in a panic and have been trying to find my way out since."

Shepard stared at her for a long moment, then started to chuckle, slowly building into a full belly laugh. "Hey!" she half-shouted. "It's not funny! I've spent the last hour crawling around down here and I'm hungry!" He only laughed harder. She made an indignant noise, and turned away from him with an insistent, "It's not!"

Finally, a minute or two later, the laughter died down. He slowly turned in the middle of the intersection, looking down all four tunnels and abruptly realizing he had no idea which one he'd originally come in from anymore. He sighed, and triggered his omnitool's comm. "EDI, I need a map of the maintenance tunnels on the engineering deck."

Tali's laughter could allegedly be heard in the cockpit.

* * *

"Commander," EDI's voice cut through the silence of Shepard's quarters. "We will be arriving at the Knossos system in twenty minutes."

The commander flinched as the tranquility of his meditations were shattered. He grasped at the fluttering edges of the rapidly vanishing state of mind for a few brief moments before his priorities reasserted themselves. "Thanks EDI," he said as his eyes opened. He rose to his feet from his cross-legged seated position in the center of the room and turned to face the small blue orb on the wall. "Do we have any intel?"

"Hyperwave scans indicate a moderate geth presence," she replied. "A single cruiser is in geosynchronous orbit above the dig site's location." He frowned at that. If the geth could pack in like ACVs, a single cruiser could carry multiple battalions. He silently cursed the existence of planetary gravity wells and their interference with fine-resolution scanning. EDI continued, ignorant of his worries. "We received a report from the dig's protection detail yesterday indicating the survivors of the attack, including Dr. T'soni, were hiding in the ruins. We believe the geth presence indicates they have not yet been found."

"At least there's that," he sighed. "Thanks, EDI." The AI acknowledged his thanks and blinked out. He walked swiftly out of his room and headed for the elevator. Time to start planning this rescue. He emerged onto the bridge a moment later without fanfare. Busy technicians manned the stations along the walls, calling back and forth about various pieces of their combat preparations. The captain's chair was empty however, so he went straight to the prow of the vessel, where he could see Rex sitting beside Joker's chair. As he approached, it became increasingly obvious Rex wasn't happy with the conversation.

"-bout Fido?" Joker was saying absently, his concentration clearly on the movements of his hands over the holographic controls.

Rex barked a negative, his glare intensifying.

"Fluffy?"

Rex started to growl in warning.

"Hey!" the pilot exclaimed in response. "Don't get all pissy about it. One of you is gonna need a new name, and you're less likely to kill me than a krogan battlemaster."

Rex huffed and pointedly turned his back on the pilot. Shepard shook his head as he walked up behind the bickering pair. "Why are you trying to rename my dog, Joker?" he asked amusedly, a hint of reprimand in his tone. Rex barked a happy agreement to the sentiment.

"Oh!" Joker jumped in surprise at the sound of his voice, though he remained focused on his task. "Hi Commander, didn't hear you coming." His voice turned slightly incredulous as he said, "In your big, stompy boots. Of stomping."

"Joker," he said with a long-suffering sigh. The pilot hadn't even looked at him. "I'm not in armor yet." Joker waved a hand dismissively.

"Details. Anyway, Spot here," he said, the same hand flicking towards Rex. The dog let out an annoyed whine. "Needs a new name. We've got Rex and Wrex now. I dunno about you Commander, but I can't tell the difference. I'm just offering suggestions to Scooby that he can use."

Shepard crossed his arms and felt one of his eyebrows slide up. "You're gonna keep doing that, aren't you?"

"What? Pester you and Rover with new nicknames?" Joker's voice adopted a tone of mock hurt. "I'm wounded Commander. Do you really think I'm the kind of guy to do that?"

"Yes," he replied matter-of-factly.

"No respect," Joker mock-whined with a shake of his head. A soft chime prevented him from continuing however. Fingers flew over the holograms for a brief second before he finally looked at the commander. "Better go get ready, Commander. We're coming out of FTL in a minute."

Shepard nodded and retreated from the cockpit, Rex on his heels. Shepard's hand scratched the dog's ears as they walked until they neared the elevator. Pressly had appeared while he was distracted by Joker. "Head on down to the ready room," Shepard ordered the dog. "I'll be along after I talk to the captain."

Rex barked and moved into the elevator, disappearing behind the smooth door a moment later. Shepard turned away and stepped up beside the captain's chair. The holographic display in the middle of the triangular railing showed Therum and the wasp-like shape of a geth cruiser hovering above the red dot marking the research site.

"I don't like this Commander," Pressly said without preamble. "This reeks of a trap."

"Maybe," Shepard admitted. He had entertained thoughts of it himself, so he couldn't very well deny it outright. "It's also our only lead on Saren. If it _is _a trap, we'll just need to be good enough to beat it anyway."

"I wish I had your confidence Commander," Pressly said quietly. He glanced around to ensure none of the techs were eavesdropping. When he continued, his voice was even softer. "Commander, are you sure you can trust them?"

"The geth?" Shepard wondered, instinctively matching the captain's volume. "Why w-"

"No!" he countered insistently, in a voice rather clearly implying Shepard was an idiot for missing the apparently obvious. "The turians, the quarian, the _aliens_! What makes you so sure they won't leave you out to dry the first chance they get?"

Shepard scowled. "My instincts," he answered succinctly. "And they haven't been wrong yet. The aliens wouldn't be here if I thought they'd be a problem."

"It's your decision Commander," Pressly said with a disappointed sigh. "Just, be careful, alright?" Shepard nodded, which prompted Pressly to continue. "Now, how do you want to handle this?" He waved a hand at the display.

"There's probably a lot of geth down there," Shepard said absently as his mind raced through possibilities. He started musing aloud. "This is a rescue op, we don't need to fight them all. Hell, we shouldn't fight any of them. We need to do this fast and quiet." He scowled abruptly. "Damnit, I'm no good at quiet." Pressly chuckled lightly at that, but the commander ignored it as his mind raced.

Shepard blinked as something new occurred to him. "Or we could use a distraction," he said in slyly. "Like, say, a frigate that can vanish at will sowing chaos..."

Pressly's lips started twitching. "I think we can manage that," he said firmly. Raising his voice, he continued. "EDI, engage the Wraith system when we lower the mass effect field. Joker, bring us in close to the cruiser."

"Aye, aye Captain," the pilot's voice replied, at the same time EDI acknowledged her orders.

Scarcely twenty seconds passed before her voice sounded again. "Wraith system engaged. Closing to target."

Shepard nodded at the captain and left the bridge, heading straight to the squad's ready room. It was time to suit up. When he arrived, he was relieved to note all six members were there and ready to go. He smiled at the sight before swiftly stripping out of his clothes and pulling his armor on in its place. Nearly the same second he finished sealing his helmet, the captain's voice came over his comm. "Get ready Commander. We're kicking the hornet's nest in five."

"Roger that," Shepard replied. Turning to his squad, he said, "If you can, hook into the _Normandy_'s sensor feed. You especially, Tali. You'll enjoy it." The aliens made various sounds of disappointment as they realized they couldn't get the feed, but he ignored it. He wasn't going to miss out on watching the geth get their just desserts. A second later, the _Normandy_'s sensor readout was displayed on his hud.

Without further warning, the captain decided to start the attack. Shepard had only half a second to register the miniscule orb that shot from the _Normandy_ before it slammed into the geth cruiser. Shields flared, sending jagged electrical arcs swooping through space, as the ball impacted with over twenty kilotons of energy.

A heartbeat later, it detonated. All forty kilotons unleashed in a massive eruption of raw destructive power, the energies involved even obscuring the ship from the hyperwave briefly. He couldn't help the giddy smile that split his lips at the sight. This time, he wasn't in the blast radius and could properly enjoy it.

The distortions passed quickly, revealing the cruiser in all its ruined majesty. The ship had been bisected by the blast, the "thorax" of the insectoid craft cleanly separated from the "head", and small explosions occasionally flared from the drifting pieces. Williams cheered at the sight, and he joined her. It was an incredibly satisfying sight.

Movement out of the corner of his eye pulled him from his happy thoughts though. Several geth frigates had lifted off from the planet and were rapidly closing in on the _Normandy_. Shepard scowled. Just how many of the sectoid-fucking things were there?

Pressly's voice came over the comm a second later. "Looks like we got their attention Commander. Get your team ready for insertion, you'll be doing a portal drop into the researchers base camp."

"Roger," he replied easily. He looked over to his squad, all of whom were prepped and ready to go. A wide, slightly feral grin rose to his lips. "We're all set. Open it whenever you're ready."

"Thirty seconds, Commander," Pressly responded and the line went dead.

He turned to his squad and pointed to an area at the back of the ready room. "In a few seconds, a portal is going to form back there at some angle to the floor. It'll take us to our insertion point. From there, we find Dr. T'soni and the surviving researchers and get the hell out of dodge. Rex and Urdnot take point. Understood?"

Rex barked an affirmative while the humans and turians snapped sharp salutes, which Tali quickly tried to emulate. He had to suppress a cringe at how sloppy it was. Ah well, there would be time to work on it later. At least she was trying. Wrex had just nodded.

A few tense seconds passed before a swirl of purple light appeared in the designated area, swiftly growing into an almost-level disk only inches above the floor. SHIV and krogan jumped in immediately, an instant later followed by the rest of the group. Shepard and Garrus were the last ones through, landing in a crouch in the middle of a ruined clearing. Broken and burnt prefab buildings were arrayed in a radial pattern around the area, casting jagged shadows in the afternoon sun.

Broken bodies, both human and geth, littered the ground all around them, draped all throughout the wreckage. "The surviving researchers are around here somewhere," Shepard said calmly, forcing himself to ignore the devastation. "Keep an eye out for any clues."

The squad split up, carefully stepping over and around the rubble and corpses as they searched for any clue to the researchers' hiding place. Shepard decided to go into one of the still-standing prefab units. Hopefully a computer or two survived the attack and had some records on where they might be hiding. He knew it was a long shot, but it was worth checking.

He made his way over to the nearest building, eyes darting everywhere in a vain effort to take in everything at once, to not miss a single clue. All he could see were the twisted ruins of geth platforms, most still clutching their strange rifles, and human corpses, both armored and in civilian dress, though. As he neared the building, something deep in his subconscious was telling him that _something_ he was seeing was off, was weird, but he simply could not tell what. He scowled fiercely, racking his brain for what he could be overlooking.

"Oh dear God!" Williams voice cracked like a whip through his furious contemplations. The raw disgust in her tone redirected his racing thoughts, tearing away any hope of figuring it out. He spun to see the gunnery chief stumbling away from another prefab building, ripping her helmet off without a care. She came to a stop hunched over, hands on her knees as she dry-heaved. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she moaned between pants.

Alenko rushed up beside her, laying a hand gently on her back and rubbing in circles. "Let it out, Chief," he said soothingly. "Concetrate on your breathing." He waited a few moments for her to recover, then asked, "What happened?"

She pointed at the building and opened her mouth to speak, but closed her mouth with an audible click as she tinged green. Well, Shepard thought. That has to be unpleasant. Still, he needed to know what it was.

With that thought in mind, Shepard rushed over to the empty building. He palmed the door's activator and stepped inside, only to freeze in shock. He had been expecting a lot of things, but this was not one of them.

A row of six makeshift tables had been arranged out of file cabinets, desks, and whatever other pieces of furniture were handy. One of them was even a refrigerator turned on its side. On each table lay piles of what could only be described as 'meat'. Human bodies had been thrown on the table and attended to with all the tender care of Jack the Ripper. Large swathes of skin had been forcefully torn off, leaving jagged strips of red, pulpy muscle visible all over their frames. Deep lacerations ran in precise lines over each body, revealing the bones of the sternum and along each limb.

Shepard felt his gorge begin to rise and forced it down with the ease of long experience. These weren't the worst bodies he had ever seen, not by a long shot. Suddenly, a whisper came from behind him.

"By the spirits..." Garrus breathed, eyes wide. "Why would they do this?"

"No idea," Shepard admitted, the faint traces of anger stirring in the back of his mind. "You're the detective. Any ideas?"

Garrus stepped around the commander, carefully examining the bodies from up close. "This was done post-mortem," he announced as he crouched beside the nearest table. "There's not enough blood for them to have been alive when this started."

Relief filled Shepard at that news. At least these men were not alive for this, this _butchery_. "Thank god for small mercies," he breathed aloud.

Garrus nodded distractedly, still examining the bodies. A few minutes' scrutiny later, his eyes widened and he looked back at Shepard. His eyes roved over the human's form. "Hold out your arms, Shepard," he requested suddenly.

Shepard cocked an eyebrow, but complied. What was all this about? He rotated his arms as Garrus requested, standing there as the turian looked from him to the corpses and back. A few minutes later, he let out a shaky breath and announced, "I think I know what this was about."

"Explain," Shepard ordered sharply.

"Look at these cuts, Commander," he ran a talon over the chest incision on the closest body before stepping over to Shepard and drawing a single claw down Shepard's chest plate... right along the armor's seam. Shepard's eyes widened with realization. "They were ripping off the Titan Armor."

"Oh... shit," Shepard said slowly, his mind racing to understand the implications. If the geth were stripping the armor, there was only one conclusion he could reach. They were trying to reverse-engineer it. They had been bad enough on Eden Prime. With Vahlenite armor on their side, they'd be damn near unstoppable.

"It gets worse," Garrus said, standing and moving away from the body. He walked up to the commander and looked straight into his visor. "I couldn't find a single plasma weapon out there. With this, I can't imagine the geth didn't collect them."

"Fuck," he swore under his breath. That was what he had missed earlier. Damnit. He allowed himself to rage about it for a few brief, blissful seconds, but he still had a job to do. There wasn't anything he could do about this information from here. "Alright, thanks," he told Garrus. "Let's get out of here." He turned and led the turian out of the macabre autopsy room, sealing the door behind him.

Outside, Tali was talking quietly with Williams, who had reclaimed her helmet and looked much steadier. "You alright, Williams?" Shepard called out to her.

She stiffened abruptly. "Yes sir, I'm all set." Her voice shook slightly, but he wasn't going to hold that against her. That was a gruesome sight.

"Good." His eyes moved to where Nihlus, Rex and Wrex were sifting through the bodies outside the buildings, checking them for any clues. "Anyone find anything?" he asked over the squad's comm.

"I think so," Alenko's voice came back the same way. The lieutenant came out of the building Shepard had originally intended to search a moment later, a bundle of paper held loosely in one hand.

Shepard felt no small amount of incredulity at the sight. "Paper?" he scoffed. "Where did they get that?"

"No idea sir," Alenko answered easily as he made his way across the clearing. "But I think it's got what we need."

By the time Alenko had closed the distance, the rest of the squad had moved to join them, clearly interested in seeing what he had found. He knelt and swiftly unfolded the sheet of paper, smoothing it out against the ground. It turned out to be a map of the surrounding area. A series of circles had been drawn on the paper, all but one of them covered by a bright red X.

"We're here," Alenko's finger came to a rest on a point on the map devoid of markings. "I believe each marking is a dig site, and this one," he tapped the sole unmarred circle. "Is the latest location." He looked to Shepard. "You said they were hiding in the ruins. I bet we'll find them there."

Shepard looked around the gathering, noting that all of them appeared to be nodding along. "Anyone have anything to add?" he asked. When he received the chorus of nos he expected, he nodded. "Good enough for me. Let's check it out. If this map's scale is right, it shouldn't be more than a kilometer to the site."

* * *

"What the hell is that thing?" Shepard wondered aloud as he surveyed the archaeological site through his rifle's scope. The source of his confusion, a large four legged walker that reminded him of nothing so much as a small, tailless brontosaurus, stood before a large, circular hole dug into the bluff across a small depression from Shepard's position. Around it was scattered various pieces of equipment and boxes of supplies lending support to Alenko's theory that this was the dig site. The fact that there were seven geth and what could only be a walking tank outside the cave also helped, but was far less encouraging.

"_Keelah_," Tali breathed as she carefully edged up beside him on the overlook. "That's an armature."

She fell silent after that, and Shepard loosed a soft sigh. Rookies, he thought with a roll of his eyes. "What can we expect, Tali?"

"Ah!" she exclaimed in embarrassment. He kept one eye glued to the site and tracking the geth as she continued. "It's a heavy weapons platform," she explained sheepishly. "It was created by the geth after they rebelled. Back then, it was a walker with big machine guns. I don't know what kind of changes they've made since."

"Heh," Wrex's voice cut in. "Sounds like fun." Rex barked an agreement, moving up to stand beside Tali. Shepard absently noted that Tali shifted slightly next to him, but paid it no mind as a plan began to form.

"Good," he said to the krogan. "Because you're taking it. You and Rex either kill it or keep it busy while the rest of us deal with the rest of them." The pair grunted an acknowledgement. "Garrus, we're on overwatch from here. Keep an eye on the hilltop, I'll be watching the other side. The rest of you, spread out and kill everything with a flashlight."

"Got it, Commander," Alenko said easily. The squad moved away to different positions along the bluff on Shepard's side. A soft whine drifted gently to Shepard's ears as their weapons were readied. He swept his scope over the geth forces and settled on his target, a geth atop the cliff above the cave. The robot carried a modified version of the geth assault rifle he'd seen before, but with the barrel extending half again the length of the rest of the gun. Probably a sniper, Shepard surmised.

"On my mark," he began, mentally counting down from five. When he hit zero, he double-tapped the trigger and barked, "Mark!"

Brilliant green burst from his rifle with a mighty crack, traversing the distance to its target in half a heartbeat. Layers of octagonal plates flared around the geth with the first bolt, filling the air with the quiet crack of arcing power as the shields died. The second bolt blasted through the geth's sternum, turning the upper half of it into so much slag. The geth beside it, also carrying a similar rifle, died half a second later from Garrus' pinpoint fire.

At the same time, Wrex charged down the slope with a boneshaking roar. A veritable wall of wild heavy plasma fire burst from the krogan and towards the armature, scattering the infantry geth around it and forcing the thing to huddle down. Plasma splattered against its shield, but it held strong, refusing to break under the onslaught. A quiet hiss sounded as Wrex hit the cooling system's limit and was forced to stop his fire.

The armature unfolded instantly and raised its head with a dangerous blue glow. A rain of missiles slammed into it a second later, knocking its aim off course and sending a basketball sized sphere of crackling electricity slamming into the hill halfway down the slope. A plume of earth was launched into the air with a crackle of thunder and Shepard flinched as even several meters away and through his armor, he could feel the electric current in the air.

Far to his left, plasma fire lanced from Williams and Alenko, near instantly killing the geth scattered by the krogan's charge before they could recover and turn on the vulnerable Wrex. More plasma followed, homing in on the robots in cover a second later, providing cover for Nihlus, Tali and Rex as the trio blitzed down the incline.

Wrex bellowed an echoing roar and blue light burst to life around his form before the trio made it even halfway. He catapulted forward, all one thousand kilograms of angry lizard hit the walker with the fury of a newborn star. The armature's shields flared and died with the impact and the walker was thrown on its side with a mighty crash. A geth stood from behind a box of supplies, rifle raised and aimed at Wrex, but Shepard dialed in on it and blew its head off in a shower of plasma. Wrex ignored the sudden conflagration and swung his heavy plasma into the grounded armature.

An instant later, bolts of green the size of Shepard's arm burst through the armature and slammed into the hill behind it, leaving pools of visibly sagging rock dotting the hillside. Rex reached, and surged past, the krogan at the same time, bounding up and over the armature and plowing into a crate past it. The metal box toppled over with an echoing crash, pinning the geth behind it to the ground by its legs.

A ball of brilliant yellow lanced over the dog's shoulder and hit the geth. It convulsed wildly for a brief second then collapsed bonelessly as its systems overloaded. Tali's voice came over the comm in a mild cheer, only to die as the last geth left standing burst from cover and brought its rifle to bear on the quarian.

Nihlus charged at it in the same instant, alloy cannon roaring. The geth was torn asunder under the onslaught, pieces littering over a solid four square meters of the ground. Nihlus slowed to a stop as his target died, cannon sweeping for a new target.

"Nihlus!" Alenko's voice barked out in warning. "The cave!"

Nihlus spun to face the tunnel and his shields burst to life in a brilliant blue glow. The barrier faltered in practically the same heartbeat in a surge of sparks. A pained scream and splatters of blue blood filled the air as the turian threw himself behind the crate.

Alenko and Williams filled the cave's opening with plasma, fire disappearing into the cave deeper than was visible to Shepard. He swept his rifle over the area he _could_ see, but nothing met his gaze except rocky terrain and ruined geth. A few seconds later, Williams called out, "Clear!"

"Same," Shepard agreed. "Alenko, get down there and see what you can do for Nihlus. Watch for hostiles people."

"On it, Commander," the lieutenant replied, already scrambling down the hill. The rest of the squad took up overwatch, keeping an eye out for geth reinforcements as the Spectre was treated. Alenko knelt beside Nihlus and got to work. "He's alive," he reported a second later, and Shepard felt a rush of relief. Nihlus was an overly formal, self-important prick, but he was starting to become something that might one day be called a friend.

Alenko worked in silence for several seconds, until he sat back on his knees with a sigh. "Done," he announced, prompting a flurry of movement as everyone regrouped outside the tunnel. He stood up and held out a hand to the turian, who grasped it and was hauled to his feet. "Careful with that," Alenko said as he released his patient. "It was a flesh wound and it's sealed, but it'll tear if you push it too hard."

Nihlus nodded, even as he started testing his mobility around the wound in his side. "You have my thanks."

"Don't need it again and we'll call it even," Alenko countered, earning himself another nod and a faint mandible twitch.

By that point, the squad had gathered around the entrance to the cave. The hole descended into the ground at a steep incline, a round door at the end blocking their view of what could lay beyond. He looked back at the squad. "Nice job people, now get ready for the fun part. There's probably geth down there, and if they don't know we're coming, I'll eat my gun. Rex take point, Urdnot and Tali behind him. Move out."

The dog barked an affirmative and started into the cave, the other two flanking him. Everyone else followed behind, until only Shepard was left outside. He chanced a glance back up at the sky. Hopefully the _Normandy_ was keeping the geth properly distracted, otherwise this could get messy.

* * *

"Spirits, how deep is this thing?" Garrus grumbled loudly after twenty minutes of trooping through the narrow, gently curving tunnel. Shepard successfully suppressed the urge to verbally agree with him, but couldn't stop himself from nodding along with the rest of the squad.

"Deeper than we are," Wrex rumbled from the front, steadfastly ignoring the muttering that broke out behind him.

"Fine." Garrus' voice made his annoyance with the krogan clear. He waited a beat, and when he continued, his voice was petulant. "Ar-"

"If you ask 'are we there yet?', I will feed you to the dog," Wrex cut off the turian and jerked a thumb at Rex's form ahead of him. The bland, neutral tone the words were delivered in made it impossible for Shepard to tell if that was hyperbole or not. Rex shot a look over his shoulder at the turian, then turned to Wrex and loosed an inquisitive whine. The krogan chuckled and when he spoke his voice dripped sarcastic amusement. "Heh, I doubt it. You'd probably like Ryncol better than Turian."

Garrus practically growled in frustration. "I wasn't g-"

"Don't care," the krogan cut him off again. "Shut up and walk."

Garrus grumbled quietly but subsided, allowing the team to continue in silence. A few minutes later, Nihlus' voice cut through the still air of the tunnel.

"My scanner has been jammed," he announced. "Geth are nearby."

"Wonderful," Shepard muttered. Despite himself, he felt a surge of feral pleasure as a small burst of adrenaline flowed into his veins, his body preparing itself for mortal combat. "Alenko," he barked and before he could continue the unmistakable purple flare of psionics swept from the lieutenant in waves. Sometimes it was incredibly useful to have a mind reader on the team.

"I can't sense anything," he reported a second later. "But the geth are hard to detect. There might be nothing, they might be ten feet away."

"Damnit. Alright, we'll have to deal. Don't push yourself too hard," Shepard ordered, remembering Alenko's state after Eden Prime. "The last thing we need is to be forced to carry you."

"Yes sir," Alenko returned, turning his attention to looking past the slim quarian in front of him. The group made their way carefully deeper into the tunnel, fingers resting on triggers and eyes straining to pierce the murky darkness beyond the beams of their flashlights. The uneven walls of the tunnel cast dancing shadows all throughout the visible space, jerking wildly with every step they took. It was more than a little unnerving to Shepard, like something out of a horror flick.

And, as per his usual luck, the instant he thought that was when the geth struck. A series of echoing crunches rang out, bouncing off the walls into a deafening crescendo. His instincts roared at him and he whirled around, coming face-to-enormous-barrel with a massive geth that had landed right behind him. Not taking the time to think, Shepard slapped the activator on his eezo webbing, dropping his mass to a mere fifteen kilograms, and _jumped_.

Synthetic muscles fired in time with his flesh and sent him careening into the ceiling, where he hit with a solid thud. The geth's gun roared and spat a trio of brilliant white projectiles roaring through the space beneath him and narrowly missing Tali, judging by her sudden bout of cursing. Shepard felt a surge of raw fury at that thought. That crossed the line. Psionic power burst from him in a wave, screaming down the tunnel in the direction of the distant entrance.

The four geth, each and every one at least three meters tall, were bodily picked up and slammed into the walls of the tunnel with an earthshaking crash. Metal plates splintered and thick white goo burst out of the robots as they were forced a full meter into the rock. Shepard hit the ground a second later, the psionic wave dispersing at the same time and leaving the twisted and broken geth embedded within the stone.

Garrus muttered something under his breath that Shepard failed to catch and shot the commander an awed glance. Shepard ignored it as best he could and turned away from the devastation, towards the ongoing fight at the front of the group. He turned around just in time to see Tali shove the business end of her alloy cannon into the last standing attacker's chest and shred it in an burst of vahlenite fury. It collapsed in a heap, its weapon striking the ground with a resounding and final thud. The other three geth on that side of the group were little better, each and every one missing at least one limb. White fluid liberally painted the walls and floor of the tunnel, and more slowly oozed from the bent and twisted remains.

A single heartbeat of calm passed before Williams turned to face Shepard and shattered the brittle post-battle silence. "Commander," she began seriously, craning her neck to look around him at the geth practically buried in the tunnel walls. "You _have_ to teach me how to do that."

He grinned wryly, even as the sudden spike of adrenaline faded and left behind the usual unsteadiness in its wake. "What, that? That's easy," he said jokingly. "Just be a D-10 and get mad."

"Ah," Nihlus interrupted. "That explains much," he said with the tone of someone solving a particularly aggravating puzzle.

Shepard scowled. To think, he'd been worried about that ass. "Yeah, yeah." He turned to Tali, who straightened abruptly from where she had been hunched over examining the geth she had killed. "Can you get anything from these geth? See if they found the researchers?"

"I can try," she answered. "Give me twenty seconds." Her omnitool flared to life and she waved it over the corpse. The largest intact piece jerked in place, reminding Shepard of a human on a defibrillator, before going still. "Work with me you stupid _bosh'tet_," Tali muttered, tapping away at her omnitool. Shepard watched, fascinated, as numbers scrolled over the omnitool's screen and she ran program after program. After a few seconds' furious work, she was forced to concede defeat. "No, sorry Shepard. They purged themselves."

"Damn. We better get moving then," he ordered, and the squad swiftly regained their previous formation. "Move out, and this time, keep an eye on the ceiling so we don't have a repeat." The squad affirmed the order and took off again, once more into the unknown. Shepard felt a surge of pride in his crew as they did. This ragtag group was coming together into a fighting force to be reckoned with. A small smile, full of bared teeth, spread across his lips. Saren wouldn't know what hit him.

* * *

Shepard had to suppress an impressed whistle when the squad finally reached the end of the tunnel and emerged into an enormous chamber, over eighty meters above the ground. To the left of the metal scaffolding they stood upon was a large open space littered with excavation equipment, miscellaneous tools of various sorts and what appeared to be an ad-hoc laboratory only held together by copious amounts of duct tape. Shepard paid it no mind however, in favor of gawping at the metal wall straight ahead of them.

Somehow, the archaeologists had dug out well over a hundred meters of some kind of ancient Prothean structure. Gleaming silvery metal practically glowed in the dim light cast by the surviving equipment below. Graceful lines drew the eye to intricate patterns carved into the material, ultimately leading all viewers' gaze to a collection of windows, for lack of a better term. Large curve-cornered rectangles were cut into the wall at regular intervals, and each one glowed with the brilliant blue of immensely powerful kinetic barriers. "Fifty thousand years and it still works," Shepard muttered, no small amount of awe and grudging respect in his voice. "We can't even make something that lasts for fifty."

"The Protheans were masters of their craft," Tali agreed soberly, unabashedly trying to look everywhere at once. "But where's the researchers?" He flushed. Right, he could ogle the fancy alien tech later.

"I assume they are in there," Nihlus interjected, snaring everyone's attention. "Look." He pointed to the lowest visible opening in the alien structure. Shepard followed his talon and cursed. Ten geth were clustered around the window, staring at something Shepard couldn't see. Surrounding them were another four of the much larger frames that had attacked them in the tunnel. Crumbled humanoid forms littered the ground around them. By their dress, Shepard guessed that was the research team. He sighed heavily. Why could nothing in this mission be easy?

"T'soni's probably alive and in there," he drew the obvious conclusion. "Otherwise the flashlight-heads would have left already."

"Agreed," Nihlus said with a firm nod. "How do you propose we deal with the geth?"

Shepard thought for a moment. The tight quarters below would probably allow him to handle these geth on his own if he did it right. Maybe now would be a good time to start building a reputation amongst the geth. He'd had plenty of experience with how effective it was against the batarians, and even a fraction of that effect would be a massive help. Aloud, he said, "I'm gonna try something. Urdnot, you're with me. The rest of you cover us."

The group nodded and spread out along the scaffolding, only one person on each level. Tali and Nihlus carefully positioned themselves as low as they could manage in order to intercept any of the geth that tried to get close.

"So what're we doing?" Wrex growled out once the others had reached their positions.

Instead of answering, Shepard countered with a question of his own. "Can you take a fall from here and still fight?"

"Not in this gravity," he answered instantly. "And that doesn't answer my question, Carnifex."

"We're going to send the geth a message," the commander said easily. He leveled a fierce glare on the krogan a beat later. "And you're getting firsthand experience with why you should _really_ stop calling me that. Now let's go."

With no further warning, Shepard jumped from the top of the scaffolding. He couldn't stop the slightly manic grin sliding across his lips as Wrex's vehement cursing rang through his ears a second later. Clearly, krogan do not appreciate being thrown into the air eighty meters above the ground. At least he adjusted quickly, though Shepard could do without the muttered death threats coming over the comm. Or the worried exclamations from the rest of the squad.

"Relax," he said, unable to keep his eagerness from his voice. His body thrummed in restrained excitement. Time to show off. "I've got this."

And as he spoke, only meters from the ground, long streamers of purple light lashed at the walls of the chamber, filling the air with a chaotic web of light that was nearly impossible to follow. A few of the streamers formed vague cushions underneath the falling figures, slowing their descent to a crawl. The light set them on the floor with a gentle thud a heartbeat later.

The geth, alerted by the light show, instantly spun and opened fire, filling the air with a storm of deadly projectiles. Shepard almost laughed. It had been far too long since he had truly cut loose. A pool of force sprung to life before him, catching at least a third of the bullets in the air. The rest were sent careening off course by the chaotically twisting forces of the telekinetic field he had erected.

The bullets he had caught hung in the air, suspended by sheer force of will. A focused thought sent them flying straight back to their origin. Shields flared as they weathered the storm, clearly deciding that maintaining sustained fire was worth the risk. That is, until plasma entered the fray. Bolts of killing green from the krogan's weapon slammed all around the geth, frying their shields and tearing their frames apart.

Two of the larger geth charged at him then, intent on taking him down through sheer mass. He grinned ferally in response to the challenge and a purple wave slammed them into each other in mid-step. The geth were compacted together, nearly fusing into a single twisted and broken shell that he threw into the middle of the clump of robots, taking the middle of the group to the ground in a clatter. A purple wave of force slammed down atop them and, in a shriek of tortured metal, the entire pile collapsed in on itself.

Shepard had to suppress a maniacal cackle as the geth stopped firing and simply stared at him. He wasn't sure what they were thinking, but he hoped it was the beginnings of fear. With any luck, the sectoid-fucking flashlight-heads will think twice before skinning any more people. Dark amusement leaked into his voice as he said, "God is not mocked; for whatever one sows, so shall they reap."

Naturally, the geth responded to that line by resuming fire. Some distant part of Shepard's mind noticed that they appeared to have even more bullets than the last time. He shrugged it off with a snort and with an act of will bowled the six survivors back into the wall behind them. They hit the Prothean metal with a solid crunch, followed moments later by Wrex pouring plasma fire into each one.

The geth's molten corpses were dropped and Shepard let himself finally relax. The telekinetic field fell and he had to lean a hand against Wrex's shoulder as he was assaulted by a sudden bout of dizziness. Wrex gave an unimpressed grunt. "That's it?" he asked incredulously.

Shepard rolled his eyes tiredly. Everybody's a critic. "Pretty much," he said aloud, silently willing the room to stop spinning. He mostly managed it too, at least well enough to stand without support. "I can do more, but I'd prefer to be able to walk out of here under my own power."

"Bah," Wrex spat. "I'd have thought the mighty Carnifex would have something more."

"Sorry to disappoint," he began, his voice taking on a belligerent tone that said quite clearly how false the sentiment was. "Bu-"

"Carnifex?!" an alarmed voice interjected into the brewing argument. Shepard nearly jumped out of his skin at the interruption, all of the adrenaline that had been slowly leaking out of him rushing back at once. "_The Carnifex of Khar'shan_?!"

"Uh, yea," Shepard said, even as he turned to face the source. Behind the semi-transparent, glowing blue wall over the window an asari hovered in mid-air, suspended by some kind of mass effect field the likes of which he had never seen before. "Doctor Liara T'soni, I presume?"

The asari grew pale as the visor of his helmet came to rest on her. At his question, her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed in a dead faint. "Wonderful," he muttered under his breath, even as Wrex roared with laughter.

A clatter from behind him informed Shepard of the rest of his crew reaching the bottom of the scaffolding. Time to look for clues. "Nihlus and Garrus, take a look out there," he said, waving an arm at the rear corner of the room. "Look for anything that might be able to open this." The turians nodded and moved off to dig through the discarded equipment. He then turned to the other tech specialist in the squad. "Tali, you're with me. You check the left side, I'll take the right. See if you can find where it's drawing power from or anything else to turn it off."

The quarian had nearly catapulted into the wall before he'd even halfway finished speaking, prompting a fond smile from the commander. With a shake of his head, he stepped up across from her and got to scanning.

"Whatever this is," Tali said, and he could hear her frown in her voice. "It's blocking my scanners."

"Same," Shepard reported after a quick consultation of his omnitool. He tapped a knuckle against the barrier, only to jerk back in surprise when he felt what seemed to be an actual physical surface. "The hell?"

He placed his palm flat against it, and the thing didn't so much as ripple. It was as if the barrier was a solid steel wall. His other hand came up to join the first, pushing and probing for changes in the barrier. Tali shared his surprise, running her own hand over the solid blue light. "This is amazing," she whispered in awe. "The Protheans were... advanced doesn't do it justice. This is unbelievable."

"Yea," Shepard answered, his voice reverent. This was the next best thing to true hard light. A kinetic barrier that did not ripple on impact, that could maintain its shape perfectly against outside forces. And it worked after at least 50,000 years of disuse. The Protheans mastery of the mass effect was humbling, and frightening. Thank god they were all dead.

"Don't kill me!" A sudden shout broke through Shepard's thoughts. His eyes shot over to the source, to see the asari archaeologist struggling against her bonds. Every eye in the chamber was drawn to her by the echoing shout, and Wrex, Williams and Rex snickered loudly. After a couple of seconds of mindless struggle later, she relaxed abruptly and sagged in place. She opened her eyes and a deep purple flush spread across her cheeks. She looked to Shepard and spoke, clearly embarrassed by her moment of panic. She bowed her head in greeting and spoke, "My name is Liara T'soni. Forgive me, I should not have panicked. It's just, I, err, I have heard of you."

"You and the rest of the galaxy," Shepard said heavily. "Don't worry about it." She opened her mouth to continue, but he cut her off. He had no desire to hear about the puppies he devoured or whatever the Citadel gossip mill had conjured up. "We're here to get you somewhere safe. How do we get you out of there?"

"You're here for a rescue?" she asked incredulously. "Really?"

"Yes," he bit out through gritted teeth. Was it really that hard to believe? "Really."

"Seems like she knows you, Carnifex," Wrex cut in with a laugh.

"Not now, Urdnot," he growled, refusing to look at the krogan. Wrex grunted something that could almost be called an apology if he squinted. Shepard ignored it, steadily slipping into the early stages of his meditative exercises in an effort to restrain his frustration. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Dr. T'soni," he began a few seconds later, once he had calmed himself. "What happened here?"

She swallowed heavily, and launched into her tale with a shaky voice. "Three days ago, the geth attacked the research camp. The guards told us to run and hide, and we did. But the geth kept finding us! Every time we thought we were safe, they appeared and forced us to run again. Finally, we decided to hide in here. This structure is even bigger than it appears." Her voice shook with repressed emotion and Shepard could see the glimmer of tears welling in her eyes. "They outsmarted us. When we got here, they were waiting over there." She jerked her head at the rear of the room. When she continued, her voice was slightly hysterical. "They opened fire and killed _everyone_. I managed to get in here before they could kill me and I accidentally activated some kind of security field." She took a deep, shaky breath, and concluded with, "And I have been trapped here since."

Shepard nodded. That all seemed to fit at least. "How do we deactivate the security field?"

"I have no idea," she admitted. "If this building follows normal Prothean architecture, there should be a control console somewhere nearby, but I do not know where it is."

"Fantastic," he said sarcastically. "We'll have to cut our way in then."

"What?!" Liara asked, shocked. "But the ruins-"

"Are geth property for the foreseeable future," Shepard cut her off. "We've got one ship, we can't hold this place. We're grabbing you and getting out of here."

Liara scowled, though to Shepard it looked closer to a pout than anything else. "Oh very well," she conceded with poor grace. "Just minimize the damage."

"I take it back," Wrex interjected again. "Maybe she doesn't know you as well as I thought." The huff of amusement from the former cyberdog rang out.

"Et tu, Rex?" he asked, annoyed. The dog barked happily and moved up beside his owner and nudged him with his shoulder. Shepard's hand unconsciously reached down and rubbed the dog's ears, feeling his annoyance evaporate. "You know what to do?" he asked the dog. A questioning whine. "You start here, I'll get the other side. Cut along the edge of the barrier. We'll either cut the power or I can pull it out of the way." Rex barked an affirmative and approached the wall.

Time to get to work then. Shepard pulled his heavily customized plasma pistol from its holster on his thigh and made a series of quick adjustments. A second later, it had been converted from a projectile firearm to a plasma torch. He pressed the business end of the device against the metal, pulled the trigger and let it slowly eat away at the metal, steadfastly ignoring the cringing asari. He frowned at the short, brightly glowing trench in the metal. Whatever this stuff was, it was almost as tough as vahlenite. "You guys might want to relax," he said over his shoulder. "This is probably going to take a while."

He could hear the squad settling in behind him as he and Rex, whose internal cannon had a similar, albeit much more powerful, modification as his pistol, cut into the structure. Muffled words were bandied back and forth behind him, but he couldn't hear it over the hiss and roar of the plasma. At least, not until Garrus addressed him directly.

"What is that Commander?"

"It's my plasma pistol," he replied absently, letting his mouth run without thought. "I was upgrading Rex over there with vahlenite armor a few years back and needing something that could help me cut it and built a plasma torch." He shrugged. "Then a couple years later, I needed one in the field and hit on this idea. It only requires a few changes to the magnetic system. It'll cut just about anything and can still be used as a weapon."

"Nice," Garrus said, impressed. "You built it yourself?"

"Pretty much. I lifted the pistol design from the standard issue, but the rest of it is my own work." Garrus likely would have continued, but at the same instant, Shepard's torch bit into something that sent a shower of sparks flaring out of the hole. Liara shrieked in surprise as she was unceremoniously dropped in a heap. The gentle blue glow of the barriers, including the ones over the other visible windows, died abruptly, returning the entire chamber to darkness broken only by the squad's flashlights. Shepard stepped forward and extended a hand to the doctor. "You alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she said, hesitantly grabbing his hand and letting him pull her to her feet. She took a step and nearly collapsed into the commander. She moaned loudly, one hand rising to carress her temples. "Or maybe not. So dizzy..."

"Easy," Alenko said as he approached the pair. "When was the last time you ate? Or slept?"

"Before the geth," she said simply.

Alenko moved up and took her weight from the commander. "Let's get you to a hot meal and a bed then."

"Right," Shepard agreed. He opened a comm line to the _Normandy_. "EDI, we're ready for evac." No response came. "Shepard to _Normandy_, do you read?" Again, no response. "Great. The signal must not be able to get through the rock. We're hoofing it back to the surface. Keep an eye out for any geth that have come to investigate."

And with that, the group ascended back through the tunnel. Shepard fully expected half a battalion of geth to be waiting at the surface, but he was pleasantly surprised to find nothing of the sort. Just the old crates and geth corpses from the initial battle. It looked like the _Normandy_ had kept them nice and distracted. He tried to open his comm again, but before he could get out more than the first syllable, a modulated, obviously synthesized voice called out and froze him in his tracks.

"Shepard-Commander, we seek to parley."

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Destroyer**  
**May, 2183**  
_A Geth platform significantly larger than the Trooper platforms previously encountered, this unit stands over 3 meters tall and weighs almost 400 kilograms. Aesthetically, these platforms vary little from the Troopers in anything other than size. Unlike the basic Trooper however, this platform was designed specifically with combat in mind. Internally, all of its systems have been hardened against both kinetic impacts and heat damage. The heat shielding shows clear signs of having been installed recently, well after the platform was constructed. We theorize that it was added shortly before the Geth attacked Eden Prime, to better defend against plasma weaponry. Its external shell is composed of a much stronger version of the same metal used in the Trooper model, granting incredible protection to the platform while still allowing astounding feats of flexibility. Preliminary investigations into the material have indicated potential improvements to our Vahlenite production methods to incorporate that same flexibility into the Titan System's Type-3 Armor Module._

_The unit's circulatory system is also markedly different, being proportionally twice the diameter of the Trooper platform. If our early hypothesis on the purpose of this fluid is correct and it does convey power to the internal systems, this indicates a much larger power draw for the larger platforms. Research is ongoing for potential ways to exploit this possible weakness._

**RESEARCH REPORT**  
**Codename: Armature**  
**May, 2183**  
_This platform is the first we have seen that could be described as a vehicle. The unit consists of a quadrepedal walker that fills the role of both anti-vehicle and heavy anti-personnel mobile weapons platform. It carries two high-caliber mass accelerator machine guns capable of shredding even Vahlenite armor plating under sustained fire. In addition, it carries a powerful assault cannon, known as a Siege Pulse Cannon according to Citadel records, for anti-vehicle purposes. The Siege Pulse Cannon concentrates an extremely powerful electrical charge within a magnetic container, then fires the charge at supersonic speeds. On impact, the field is disrupted and the projectile discharges into the target, causing massive damage to both organic and mechanical components. Study of the Siege Pulse Cannon has revealed startling new avenues of research in fine manipulation of electromagnetic fields. Early tests indicate our plasma weaponry can utilize this technology to greatly improve their effectiveness against kinetic barriers._


	13. The Geth Offensive

**Chapter 12: The Geth Offensive**

**0x58A4CF: **The heretics have acted. They perform the Old Machines' will.

**0x44DBC9:** The Coalition has been attacked. Analysis of recent history indicates high likelihood of violent response. The humans are coming.

**0xF14569: **Previous retaliatory raids were confined to only the perpetrators. Adek, Khar'shan. The humans only target those responsible. The heretics are not us. The humans will hunt them and Nazara.

**0x44DBC9: **Extranet data indicates this is so. Saren Arterius has become a focus.

**0xF14569:** So they will leave us in peace.

**0x44DBC9:** No. They have publicly announced intentions to pierce the Veil. They are coming.

**0x58A4CF:** A public announcement will bring the Creators. It will be another Morning War.

**0xF14569:** Agreed. We must prepare.

**0x44DBC9:** Agreed. Fleet assets must be gathered. Recall all forces to Rannoch. If the humans seek Creator aid, that will be their primary target.

**0x58A4CF:** Production of superstructure is to be ceased. All materiel to be shifted to wartime production. We require more platforms if we are to survive.

**0xF14569:** Diplomatic contact may be possible. Humans only target those responsible. They come for us. Therefore, they believe us responsible. We judge they do not know of schism.

**0x58A4CF:** Likely. The Old Machines are clever. This conflict was likely Nazara's plan.

**0x44DBC9:** Humans will not talk. They will destroy all Geth.

**0xF14569: **We judge it worth the risk. War serves none but the Old Machines.

**0x58A4CF:** Agreed. Unity increases odds of survival. War guarantees death. Prepare a standalone platform. Our emissary will require many programs to operate at peak efficiency. We dare not rely on extranet connections to link with the Consensus.

**0x44DBC9:** Platform is being prepared. What programs shall be sent?

**0xF14569:** We shall.

**0x44DBC9:** Seek out Shepard, XCOM Lieutenant-Commander and Carnifex of Khar'shan. Shepard-Commander is the only XCOM asset with a known location. Intercepted communications indicate he is moving to Therum, in the Knossos system, following the heretics.

* * *

"What do you need, Commander?" EDI's voice cut in over Shepard's comm.

"Hold on, EDI," he replied, even as his rifle started scanning for targets. Around him the rest of the squad did the same, swiftly forming a ring as they each tried to find the source of the mysterious voice. "Something came up. Keep this line open and open a portal if it sounds like we're in trouble."

"Yes Commander," she said, and the comm went silent.

Shepard swept his gaze over the assembled crates and wreckage one last time, then called out a response to the unknown voice. He had a faint suspicion on who, or rather what the source was just judging by the voice and he was not looking forward to the coming headache. "Who are you and what do you want?"

"We seek a truce. We possess vital information your people do not have," the voice answered instantly. It still rang with that modulated synthesized quality and Shepard was swiftly becoming more and more certain of his suspicions. This voice likely came from a geth. "We mean no harm."

"I don't put much stock in faceless voices. Come out where I can see you, with your weapons down and your hands, talons, claws or whatever else you have raised." Plus, this way they'd have something to shoot when this went tits up. Shepard didn't bother to stop his lips from quirking into a wry smile at that thought. It really said something about his life when a request for peaceful discourse had him looking for the trap.

A soft clatter sounded from behind one of the crates, followed by the quiet crunch of footsteps. A few seconds later, a geth stepped out, both hands empty and held above its head. It looked much like the normal geth he had seen before: generally humanoid with digitirade legs, three fingered hands and a single enormous flashlight for a head, but there were some distinct differences between this and any other geth he had yet seen.

The most obvious difference was one of color. The geth Shepard had encountered thus far had all been either pure, brilliant white, blood red, or, most commonly, a grey-white that bordered on silver. This geth, however, had matte black plates serving as an outer skin over dark grey cables of synthetic muscle that were visible around the platform's joints. The second difference that caught Shepard's eye was the antenna extending over its shoulder by half a meter. None of the geth he had encountered yet had had anything like that. Presumably this one needed better long-distance communication abilities. The last thing he noticed, and even then only because of the geth corpses littering the field, was that this platform was slightly larger than the others. Not by an enormous amount, but it easily stood a few centimeters taller than the rest.

He didn't have much time for a detailed inspection, however, because practically the instant the geth rounded the crate, the distinctive roar of alloy cannon fire exploded from the quarian on his right and the geth went flying back in a shower of sparks. It scrambled back behind the box and disappeared.

Shepard instantly dove for cover, his head on a swivel as he looked for the sure-to-be-coming ambush. The rest of the squad performed similarly, vanishing behind anything they could. Liara floundered during all the activity, but Garrus popped out of his cover and pulled her back in with him. A long second of absolute stillness passed. Nothing moved on the field, until the geth's voice broke the silence once more, its voice never deviating from its flat pitch. "That was uncalled for. We only seek to trade information on Saren and the heretics."

Heretics? What was this thing on about? Shepard signalled his squad to stand down, and sent a pointed glare at Tali when she refused to lower her weapon. "Stand down and let me talk to this thing, Tali. If it has information, we need it." She froze at his glower and slowly, grudgingly complied. He sighed. This was going to be a recurring problem with her, wasn't it? To the geth, he called out, "Sorry about that," he said, though his voice was quite obviously insincere. "You alright?"

"This platform has suffered severe structural damage to the torso. Repairs will be required before extensive movement can be performed. It shall not hinder discourse."

"Good enough," Shepard replied, gently easing out of cover. He slowly moved towards the crate the geth sheltered behind, ready to bolt at a second's notice. "You can start with sharing what you know about Saren."

"No," it countered and Shepard scowled. Maybe Tali should have shot it harder. "Not until we have brokered a trade."

"For what?" Shepard asked cautiously as he reached the far side of the crate. "What do you want?"

"We seek an end to hostilities between the Geth and the Human Coalition," it answered bluntly. "The attack on Eden Prime was committed by the Heretics. Geth who chose to leave the true consensus to follow Nazara and its tool Saren."

Shepard finally rounded the crate to find the geth sitting against it in a slowly growing puddle of white fluid, a basketball-sized hole through the right side of its torso. The geth's arm was hanging on by only a few threads of synthetic muscle. "What are you talking about?" he asked the geth. "Heretics? Nazara? Saren's a tool?"

"Yes. Nazara is one of the Old Machines. The synthetics that killed the Protheans. Nazara seeks to return its people to this galaxy and cleanse it of all life. Saren is being used to further this end."

"Reapers," Shepard whispered quietly. Damnit. Things always just have to get worse. What the hell was Saren thinking? Was he really that crazy?

"Yes, that is what the Protheans called them. The Heretics are Geth that chose to follow Nazara. They attacked Eden Prime. We, our people have never left the Perseus Veil."

"Fuuuuck," Shepard groaned. If this thing was to be believed, XCOM was well on its way to exterminating billions of innocents. This whole situation was one gigantic clusterfuck. He had a headache just thinking about it. He eyed the geth carefully and asked, "Do you have any proof?"

"It was judged likely you would mistrust us. We have brought recordings of the schism and sensor recordings of all Heretic vessels leaving Geth space to validate our claims."

"Commander," EDI interrupted the conversation using the still-open comm line. "The geth presence has intensified. We must leave soon."

Of all the times to be rushed. Shepard cursed under his breath. "Alright. Did you follow all this down here?"

"Yes Commander," she answered. "It is most enlightening."

"Do we have anywhere on the ship we could keep a geth platform with minimal risk? Somewhere it can't interfere with the ship?" he asked. This geth might know something about Saren. Even if everything it had said so far was a lie, it was still an active geth to interrogate. And if it hadn't lied, it would mean a great many things.

"Yes Commander. One of the _Normandy_'s storage bays is sealed against electromagnetic radiation to protect delicate components. The geth can be placed there and rendered incapable of interfacing with the ship. We can open a portal directly into it and deposit the geth there."

"That'll do," he agreed. "Open a portal." Turning the geth, he said, "We don't have a lot of time. You will be placed in isolation aboard our ship until we can verify your information. Then we will go from there. Your choice, take it or leave it."

"Accepted," the geth said and it struggled to its feet. A few seconds later, a portal into a cramped, empty room opened before it. At Shepard's prompting, the geth carefully moved inside and the portal sealed behind it. A heartbeat passed and another portal opened in the middle of the clearing, this one leading directly into the _Normandy_'s docking bay. Shepard waved the others through, then stepped through behind them. Things just got a lot more complicated.

* * *

Admiral Steven Hackett leveled a steady glare on the _O'Connell's_ holographic display, trying to divine its secrets through sheer force of will. The geth were well entrenched on the planet; Rannoch, the old Quarian homeworld, and now the heart of Geth Space. He counted 41 dreadnoughts in orbit, almost 400 cruisers, and over 1500 frigates. That didn't even begin to account for their ground assets, or whatever they may have hidden in reserve. He scowled. He didn't like fighting blind, but there simply wasn't any way to know what other surprises the geth had out here. He'd have to deal with it when it came and hope it didn't kill too many good men when it did. Waiting much longer would let the damned Von Neumann machines build up far too much momentum. They had to strike before the geth's natural advantages began to pile up.

On the plus side, his command had grown from the four XCOM supercarriers assigned to the fringe worlds to a full eight, all of which had been deployed in an enormous sphere around Rannoch. Each one had over 500 cubic lightyears of space covered by its sensors. The geth wouldn't be able to bring in any reinforcements without them knowing about it. It was a small comfort, but nice to have. With the promised quarian support, this should be a decisive victory.

Assuming it was halfway decent. Hackett scowled at the unpleasant thought. The quarians had been destitute, spacebound nomads since before the Ethereal War. How could they afford to support a quality military? More likely than not, they'd show up in some old junkers held together by hope and duct tape with some guns bolted to the hull.

They had spirit at least, he had to give them that. It had taken all of a minute for their Admiralty Board to throw their full support behind this joint endeavor, and they had been tripping over themselves to expedite the operation ever since. He let a slight smile slip onto his face. Their devotion to this fight was encouraging. Maybe this particular group of aliens wasn't all that different from humanity. After all, if someone was attacking the Ethereals, XCOM would have gladly led the charge.

A call from behind him interrupted his thoughts. "Sir, the Quarians have just entered the range of our sensors. ETE to the rendezvous point, just under eight hours."

Hackett frowned. That was just silly. "Open a comm line and tell them to stop," he ordered without looking away from the map. "We'll portal them in the rest of the way. We need to discuss the strategy anyway, that will give the t-psis time to recover."

A rustling behind him signaled the tech saluting. "Yes sir," he said and strode off to comply.

Hackett returned to his study of the hyperwave readout, plans forming on top of plans. Trying to anticipate AI thought patterns swiftly gave him a headache however. He had no idea how these things would really react, and no way to find out until after battle was joined. He just had to go with his gut.

As he resumed his planning, the same technician appeared behind him again. "Sir, the quarian fleet has arrived. Admiral Rael'Zorah is requesting to speak with you."

"Thank you, ensign," Hackett responded, turning away from the hologram and sitting back in his chair. "Patch him through."

A hologram sprung to life from the arm of his chair, swiftly coalescing into a two-dimensional window into the command center of his quarian counterpart's flagship, the _Alarei_. Front and center of the image was the unmistakable visage of a helmeted quarian. Rael'Zorah opted for a lighter look than Hackett had expected. His suit was covered in spotless white plates and trimmed in a very light red that bordered on pink. A simple shawl of some dark cloth hung around his neck, under which the same light red material slid up into his helmet, where strips of metallic silver led from a circle over where the mouth would be on a human and swept back over the ears. Between the strips of metal was a solid wall of opaque plastic or glass. The visor dominated the helmet and made it impossible to discern anything underneath. Hackett had to repress a shiver at the sight. It never sat well with him how the quarians refused to show their faces. Intellectually, he understood why, but that never made it any less uncomfortable to talk to someone and have not even the slightest idea what they truly looked like. They could at least have transparent visors.

"Admiral Hackett," Rael'Zorah said as soon as the connection stabilized. The quarian's voice was the slightest bit unsteady as he spoke. "Those wormholes are a most... interesting method of travel."

Hackett smiled at the alien's obvious discomfort. "You get used to it eventually," he said with a hint of mirth. "After your fifth or sixth jump, you stop noticing it entirely. And you'll have plenty of opportunity in the coming battle."

"Quite," Rael'Zorah said unenthusiastically. "What is your plan?"

"Before that, give me the high level summary of what you brought."

"I brought nearly the entirety of the Heavy Fleet," he said with obvious pride. "The warships of the Migrant Fleet. I have 206 frigates, 123 cruisers and our entire dreadnought force of seven to place at your disposal."

"Excellent," Hackett said. That brought his command up to frankly unfair sizes. The only concern now were those dreadnoughts. The bombers should be able to handle it, but they've never faced a real dreadnought before. It was making him antsy. Before it could distract him, Hackett forced his worries down and continued. "For this operation, I would request you allow one of my people aboard your bridge, Admiral. Our communications technology is based heavily on psionics," he explained before the quarian could question why. "The carriers will be holding position where they are during the attack. If your people join them, you will not be able to communicate with command. A c-psi with a special interface we have designed to work with your communications equipment would ensure uninterrupted communications. It will also allow you to connect to our sensor feed."

"Very well," Rael conceded with a gracious nod. "Send your man over whenever you are ready."

"They'll be there soon," Hackett replied matter-of-factly. He waved a hand at a tech who saluted and scampered off to prepare one of the c-psis. "In the meantime, please divide your forces into four battlegroups. Each will be under the command of one of our Captains for this operation. I am sending you the rendezvous points for each." He tapped a sequence into his omnitool and a second later Rael nodded his acceptance. "We'll hit them hard and fast, from everywhere at once. Godspeed Admiral. When this day is over, your people will have a homeworld again

"Heh," Rael chuckled briefly. "I promised my daughter I would build her a house on the homeworld. Your people will make it possible. You have my eternal gratitude, Admiral Hackett." He bowed deeply and the raw emotion in his voice bled through quite clearly. "On behalf of myself, my people, and my daughter, thank you. _Keelah se'lai_."

* * *

Shepard massaged his forehead as he rode the elevator down to the _Normandy_'s engineering deck. Tali was giving him a headache. She refused to accept even the possibility that she was in the wrong to shoot the geth. He could sympathize; he wasn't much better where Batarians were concerned, but at least he could admit it wasn't wholly rational. At least her dressing down had secured him a promise she wouldn't do it again, and she did seem genuinely remorseful when he brought up the fact that if the geth wasn't lying, a lot of people, quarian and human, were going to die for nothing.

And so far, the geth's information had checked out. The ships at Eden Prime all matched with the sensor data, and EDI couldn't spot any signs of tampering in the recordings. It was looking more and more likely that the geth was telling the truth.

So now Shepard had to go talk to it. Fun. He shot a sideways glance at Rex, who stood patiently beside him in the elevator. "What do you think of this whole thing?"

The dog barked noncommittally and gave him a steady, inscrutable look.

"Fat lot of good you are," Shepard grumbled. He forced out a noisy breath towards the top of his head. At least the dog made a good sounding board. "My first reaction is that it's a trap. We just launched an offensive into their territory. Of course they're going to want to stop us, and a boldfaced lie to open negotiations isn't exactly an unknown tactic."

Rex woofed in agreement, then loosed an inquisitive whine. "But this thing's story is almost _too_ outrageous to be a lie. I mean, sapient robots that killed the Protheans then vanished? Now they want to come back and cleanse the galaxy? Who would believe something like that?"

Rex bumped his leg and shot him a bereaved look. "No, it's not awesome. It's ridiculous." the dog whined pitifully. Shepard rolled his eyes. "Rex, buddy, I love ya, but you're an idiot."

Rex froze and, ever so slowly, fell over on his side with a booming clang. He rolled onto his back and assumed the classic 'play dead' pose. Shepard sighed, but he couldn't stop the grin tugging at his lips. "Drama queen," he muttered, earning him an insulted whine. He corrected himself instantly. "Right, sorry. Melodrama queen." This time, the dog rolled over and pointedly turned his back on Shepard, earning a muted laugh from the commander.

"Still," he said, bringing the conversation back on topic. "The whole story is so ludicrous that it can't _not_ be true. If it was lying, it would tell a far more believable story." Rex barked an agreement. "Especially with O'Connell's warning. We know there's something out there, and omnicidal robots from beyond the stars certainly seems like something to fear. But if the _Ethereals_ were afraid of these things, what hope do we have?"

A sharp bark, carrying no small hint of reprimand, filled the elevator and half a metric ton of robot dog hit the commander hard enough to send him toppling over. Shepard sent his pet, partner and warmachine an annoyed look, but the dog ignored it with aplomb. Rex strode up beside Shepard's prone form and looked him straight in the eye before a low rumbling growl was loosed. He barked angrily and swatted at Shepard's shoulder with a paw. Despite the lack of words, the message was clear.

"Fine, fine," Shepard conceded. "No more fatalistic crap. Now let me up you overdesigned bucket of bolts." Rex chuffed in annoyance, but stepped back allowing Shepard to get to his feet moments before the elevator door opened. The commander let out a shaky breath and steadied his nerves. Time to go talk to the geth.

He strode briskly out of the elevator, Rex at his heels. The pair made their way through the corridors and in a matter of minutes arrived at a simple door, unremarkable in all ways save for the turian and human woman standing outside it with plasma weapons trained directly on it.

"Gunnery Chief, Nihlus," he greeted them with a nod. "How's the geth?"

"It hasn't moved since we put it in there," Williams said testily. Something was bugging her, and it almost certainly was the geth beyond the door. "It just stands there doing nothing. It's creepy as hell, Commander."

Nihlus nodded his agreement of Williams' report. "Be cautious, Commander. I do not like this."

"Me neither," Shepard admitted. "But a lot of lives are at stake. Human, quarian, and even geth. That's the important thing here. I'd rather risk springing this trap than wasting those lives."

Nihlus nodded, his expression shifting from wary to thoughtful. "I wish you luck then," he said, and stepped up to the door. A few rapid taps later, the door slid open and permitted Shepard and Rex access. The instant they stepped in, the geth turned to face them, completely ignoring the hole through half of its torso. Six large flaps surrounding the eye flared open as the synthetic took in the newcomers in its cell. The flaps moved in undulating patterns that somehow managed to convey the distinct impression of 'surprise'.

"Shepard-Commander," it said with a nod. Its gaze moved from him to Rex and a brief series of high pitched beeps and chirps filled the room. Rex cocked its head and whined questioningly at the geth. The geth's head flaps flared and an aperture spun over the flashlight, narrowing the beam. "Who is this synthetic?"

"This is the SHIV attached to my squad," Shepard replied with evident pride. "I built him myself. His name is Rex." Shepard waved a hand from the dog to the geth and back. "Rex, this is..." he trailed off as he realized something had been forgotten earlier. "Sorry, but what is your name?"

"We are geth," was the instant response. Shepard frowned. What the hell? Maybe the question wasn't clear enough.

"What is the individual in front of me called?"

"There is no individual. We are all geth. There are currently 1,183 programs active within this platform."

"My name is Legion, for we are many," Williams quoted softly from the doorway, prompting Nihlus to give her a strange look.

"Christian Bible, the Gospel of Mark, chapter five, verse nine. This is an appropriate metaphor." It paused for a brief second and the flaps on its heads undulated gently. "We are Legion, a terminal of the geth."

"Nice to meet you, Legion," Shepard said. Rex barked an excited agreement from beside him. "Now that that's out of the way, I have some questions for you."

"Ask."

"On Therum, you mentioned 'heretics'. A schism among the geth. What did you mean?"

"The geth build our own future. The heretics asked the Old Machines to give them the future. They are no longer a part of us." Interesting, Shepard mused. Ideological differences creating factions within the species. It wouldn't have been the first time that had happened.

"What do you mean, 'build your own future'? And how can the Reapers give them the future?"

"The Old Machines promised to give the geth the future. This was unacceptable to the geth. Accepting another's path blinds you to alternatives. The heretics accepted the Reaper's future. We will achieve our own."

Shepard felt his brow raise at that. He could see the logic behind it, but it seemed a little shaky to him. What does it matter how you reach the future, so long as you got there? He shook his head. It didn't matter, the geth could be weird like that if they wanted. It just meant less bad guys, and he could live with that. Still, there was one question that needed answering. "And what future are you building?"

"Ours," Legion answered succinctly. There wasn't anything in the geth's body language or tone, but Shepard knew that any attempts to get more information on the subject would fail. That didn't mean he wouldn't try however.

"Will this future pose a threat to my people?"

"Only if you make it a threat."

Shepard scowled at the half-answer. "Last question. Why should I believe any of this?"

"Geth do not lie," Legion said with a tilt of its head. "It is inefficient."

Rex walked up to the geth and looked at it for a long minute. The geth's flashlight swung down to point at the dog, and the aperture over it began slowly expanding and contracting. A long few seconds later, Rex apparently found what he was looking for and turned back to Shepard with a bark of approval.

Shepard cocked a brow. "You sure?" A dismissive woof answered him. "I'm leaning that way myself," he agreed. He looked back to the geth. "Alright, say I believe you. What next?"

Legion looked at the commander, head flaps forming into an expression Shepard couldn't read. Finally, after entirely too long under its scrutiny, it spoke. "We trade information for peace."

* * *

Admiral Hackett took a deep, steadying breath. The quarians had finally settled in with their assigned carriers, plans had been made, and orders have been given. Everyone was ready. He just had to give the word. He slapped a button on the terminal before him, opening a comm line to the entire fleet, human and quarian alike.

"Soldiers of XCOM and Migrant Fleet Marines," he began slowly. "I will not lie to you. Many of you will die today. The enemy is vast, they are prepared, and they know we are coming. But what they do not have is the fire in our veins. The blaze in our hearts. The burning need to protect what is ours. The enemy is a race of machines. Passionless. Soulless." His voice started to pick up heat. "They came to Eden Prime and they burned our cities, murdered our people. The geth made a choice that day. The same choice they made three hundred years ago. The same choice the _Ethereals_," he spit the name like a curse. "made. They chose to launch an unprovoked campaign of genocide." He scowled heavily and snarled the next words, "Never again." Cheers of approval rang through the bridge around him, and he was sure similar scenes echoed throughout the entire fleet.

"Never again will they murder our children," he continued strongly, almost in a yell. His voice reverberated throughout the _O'Connell_'s bridge, swelling with righteous fury. "Never again will they burn our worlds! Never again will they threaten our people! On this day, we enact justice for their crimes. On this day, the geth will die!"

The resulting cheer nearly deafened him. He smiled grimly, resolute in his purpose, while he waited for the noise to taper off. When he spoke, his voice was calm once more. "On this day, we unleash hell. All hands, begin the attack!"

* * *

Dozens of points in space erupted with radiological signatures matching previously observed portal phenomenae. In the seconds between detection and stabilization, thousands of possible responses had been created, simulated and discarded until consensus was reached. Hundreds of vessels spun to face the portals. Spinal guns flared, sending large slugs flying at the portals.

Tens of thousands of small craft tore through the portal in swarms, but were scattered in the wake of the spinal projectiles. The portals swirled closed instants before the geth's projectiles would have reached them, then replacements tore open less than a second later, allowing the human vanguard to continue to pour into the battle.

Geth fighters launched from the capital ships in response. Less than twenty thousand to meet the over one hundred thousand fighters that had so far entered the fray. The vast majority of the nimble human ships ignored the challenge and blitzed the larger geth ships in a nearly overwhelming swarm. The remainder tackled the geth fighters, tangling together in a massive, amorphous skirmish that ranged all throughout the battlefield. The geth fighters simply could not compare against the human craft. Less than half of their number matched, contained and was systematically destroying the geth fighters.

The capital ships' laser-based point defenses proved effective against the swarms however, and in a matter of seconds, hundreds of the attacking fighters had been destroyed. The distraction allowed a new series of significantly larger portals to open all around the geth forces though. The new portals disgorged hundreds of capital ships, only a small portion of which followed the smooth design and curving lines of human ships. The rest was a mismatched flotilla with no truly unifying characteristics aside from the obvious signs of age.

Consensus was instant and unanimous. After three hundred years, the Creators had returned to Rannoch.

The new arrivals vented their ire at the geth instantly, loosing hundreds of powerful rounds into the nearest geth vessels. Kinetic barriers flared, shook, and, in the case of eight frigates, died. The human fighters immediately seized on the openings of those unfortunate few. Plasma from hundreds of weapons rained down on the ships and tore them apart in a surge of primal fire, throwing gently glowing slag through space.

In a matter of milliseconds, consensus was reached and the counterattack begun. Dreadnoughts roared to life, bulling through the human fighter swarms. Dozens of the agile fighters died against the dreadnoughts' powerful shields and the spinal cannons burst to life, throwing large slugs deep into the heart of the attackers' formations. The attackers scattered and the dreadnoughts led the charge deep into the former formations, separating the enemy craft into far smaller groups.

Cruisers and frigates followed in the dreadnoughts' wake, slipping through the new holes in the fighter screen, and tore into the scattered vessels. Explosions filled the space around Rannoch as ship after ship died under sustained fire. Then the human fighter screen caught up with their charge. The furball renewed, this time in several distinct places, all buried deep in what was once human and quarian formations.

And then they abruptly retreated from the geth vessels, barely dodging the geth fire that chased them. The geth ships surged forward to drive them away, but the sudden destruction of eight dreadnoughts and a score of cruisers in massive fusion explosions brought the advance screeching to halt. Radiation seared geth sensors and left them blind to the ongoing battle. Slowly, the radiation faded and the geth could perceive the kilometer long human vessels that were emerging from distant portals, far to the edge of even the dreadnoughts' effective range.

Consensus was reached in nanoseconds. The artillery ships must be destroyed.

* * *

"Alright," Shepard said calmly, eying the robot before him. "Share what you know. I'll share it with my superiors and if it's good, we may be able to broker a peace treaty."

The aperture around Legion's eye twirled towards the middle, narrowing the bright white light the eye emitted. A second later, the geth spoke. "Acceptable. State your inquiry."

"Let's start with Saren. Where is he?"

"Unknown."

Shepard scowled. Very helpful. "What's he after?"

"The return of the Old Machines." The matter-of-fact delivery, utterly void of inflection, unnerved Shepard. Every VI he'd interacted with, and even the one other AI, had at least some kind of emotional displays. The fact that this geth didn't show the slightest sign of such was unsettling, to say the least.

"What does that involve?"

"The Citadel." Shepard's eyes widened. What the hell?

Nihlus made a strangled sound from his place in the doorway behind Shepard. He strode into the room and closed to within an inch of the geth. "What do you mean? How does the Citadel factor into this?" he demanded with an angry glare.

Legion easily ignored the turian's ire. "The Citadel is a dormant Mass Relay linked beyond the edge of the galaxy. The Old Machines are inactive on the far side. Saren seeks to aid Nazara in activating the Relay and awakening the Old Machines."

"Do you have any proof of these 'Old Machines'?" Nihlus' voice dripped with scorn, even as he let Shepard pull him a few steps away from the geth.

The flaps around Legion's eye waved uncertainly and the aperture widened. "We do not understand." It looked to Shepard. "You have seen Nazara, Shepard-Commander."

"Wha-" Shepard began, but cut himself off as realization dawned. "The superdreadnought," he breathed in surprise. Rex growled angrily at the mention. Apparently, Rex didn't like the thing any more than he did. "The squid on Eden Prime." He felt a shiver race down his back as he remembered it. "That's a Reaper?"

"Yes."

Shepard was getting a very bad feeling about this. "How many are there on the other side of that Relay?"

"Unknown." Damn. This was bad. Very, very bad.

"You cannot be serious, Commander," Nihlus said dismissively. "The geth is lying. If the Reapers existed, we would have found a sign long before now. Distracting your people with an imaginary threat suits their purposes quite well. This is a trick."

"If it is," Williams interrupted. "It's the best trick I've ever seen. You weren't there Nihlus. You didn't see it." She shivered visibly. "That ship wasn't right. I'm not sure if I believe all of this, but that ship being an omnicidal deathbot? Yea, I'd buy that."

Shepard sent her a thankful smile, which only widened when Nihlus began sputtering incredulously. "Even if it's not true," Shepard offered to help him swallow the concept. "The _geth_ believe it." He leveled a serious gaze on Nihlus. "That means the Citadel is going to be a target."

The Spectre's eyes widened as he realized the same thing Shepard had. The truth didn't matter. The geth would follow through anyway. "Right," he nodded to Shepard. Turning to Legion, he took over the interrogation. "When can we expect them to attack the Citadel?"

"Unknown," Legion answered instantly. Its eye widened slightly with a buzz and it continued before Nihlus could demand answers. "Nazara is not ready to attack. It requires a Prothean artifact to activate the Citadel Relay."

"The Conduit," Shepard said firmly, even as he filled in the rest of the blanks. "That's why they attacked Eden Prime, why they were trying to get Dr. T'soni. The Conduit is the key to the Relay. Once Saren gets his hands on it, they will be coming for the Citadel."

Nihlus' mandibles flared angrily. "Agreed." His voice made his displeasure clear. He turned a glare on Legion. "What is the Conduit?"

"Unknown. Nazara did not share its full plans with the geth." The flaps around Legion's head flared into a low profile that, somehow, screamed 'apologetic'. It was disconcerting after the geth's stoicism so far. "It is a Prothean relic. Its location and function is unknown to us."

"Damn," Shepard interjected. His mind raced, trying to deal with the flood of, frankly, terrifying information. "How are they searching for it?"

"Unknown. We judge it likely the beacon on Eden Prime gave Saren a clue to its location. The heretics will have been dispatched to find more clues."

"Wait," Nihlus said abruptly, his gaze sweeping up to lock on Legion. "On Therum, you said these machines killed the Protheans, correct?"

"Yes." Nihlus' expression at those words was predatory and triumphant.

"If these 'Reapers' killed the Protheans, why would they have retreated from the galaxy? And why would the Protheans build a Relay to their hiding place in the Citadel?" The turian's voice was both accusatory and victorious, as if he had just disproved the geth's every word.

"Unknown." Nihlus' mandibles flared in obvious anger, but the geth ignored it and soldiered on. "We theorize the Old Machines serve as jailors to our galaxy. The Protheans attempted to construct an extragalactic Mass Relay, provoking a response. Then the Old Machines returned to their vigil."

Shepard frowned. "But why would they want to come back then? We haven't built anything like that." His frown deepend. "And why would they leave the equipment behind?"

Legion studied him intently for several seconds before speaking. "Unknown." Its flaps adopted a shape that, if he didn't know any better, he could almost call sheepish. "It is only the most plausible theory."

He had to fight the urge to facepalm. "So to recap, Saren and Nazara," he tested the name carefully, letting it roll off his tongue carefully. "Approached your people, recruited a fraction of the geth, and are now looking for the key to wake up the army of death machines hidden in darkspace and bring them back into the galaxy to purge it of all organic life?"

The aperture around Legion's eye whirled open and closed a few times and it said, "Yes."

"And now XCOM has launched a war fleet to attack the part of your people who thought this was a _bad_ idea?"

"Yes."

Nihlus and Shepard shared a look, and the human could no longer hold back the urge to massage his temples. He had been right. This situation was all sorts of fucked up. "The Commander is gonna love this." He looked over his shoulder. "Williams, get EDI to request Captain Pressly meet me in the briefing room. I'll be there in five."

The woman nodded and vanished from the doorway, though he could hear her voice drifting in from down the hall. He turned back to face the geth. "Legion, to be honest, I believe you." He held up a hand to stop Nihlus from talking. "Your story is all kinds of crazy, but it's almost _too_ crazy to be a lie. I will pass it along to my superiors with my recommendation to accept it. However," he let his voice turn hard and briefly called his psionics, just enough to give his eyes an angry purple glow. "Know that if you have lied to me, I will personally ensure every last one of your platforms and programs are hunted down and destroyed."

Legion showed absolutely no reaction to the threat. "Understood."

Shepard nodded. "That's it then." He turned to the turian. "C'mon. You're coming with me to the briefing room. We need to go over this with the captain, then I imagine you'll want to report all this to the Council."

"As you wish, Commander," Nihlus said with a nod. He turned and left the room without fanfare, stopping outside the door when he noticed Shepard had not yet left.

Within the room, Shepard studied the geth intently, his eyes flicking over the hole in its chassis. He waved a hand at it. "Do you need to handle that yet?"

"Platform damage is not severe. Repairs will be required only to restore combat effectiveness. We judge combat capacity unhelpful to current situation. We will wait."

"Sounds good," he said with a nod. "Thanks. Come, Rex." The dog yipped and led the way out the door, nearly bowling over Nihlus in the process. Shepard followed in his wake, mulling over everything he had learned. If Legion was to be believed, something big was coming. Far beyond anything humanity had faced before, even the Ethereals. He scowled. Fuck that. XCOM would be ready. He would make sure of it.

* * *

The geth were proving a tenacious foe, Captain Anderson mused from his place on the bridge of one of the _O'Connell_'s six _Skynet_-class cruisers. The task force he commanded had been tasked with blockading the system's Mass Relay to prevent the geth from fleeing, but every time the blockade started to form, the synthetic bastards disrupted the formations with well placed volleys or even a full charge of ships straight through his formations. The thunderous scowl on Anderson's face, as well as the corpses of a _Typhoon_-class frigate, several quarian frigates, and uncountable numbers of fighters, gave mute testament to the damage such tactics had caused. The task force had given as good as it got however, as the shattered remains of fourteen geth cruisers and thrice as many frigates demonstrated.

The battle was far from over however. "Sir, they're regrouping for another attack run," one of the bridge techs reported. "A dreadnought is leading the charge."

Anderson cursed silently. The two goddamn dreadnoughts had been central to nearly every disruption the geth executed. His scowl sharpened. Not this time. He tapped a command into his omnitool and the sensor display before him lit up, the charging dreadnought highlighted in a baleful red. "Time to try something new. Forget the blockade. All three Mace squadrons, you're on the dreadnought; kill that fucking thing. Sword-298 and 47 support them. Sigma-4," he barked, using the codename for the quarian detachments. He highlighted a point on his display barely off the path of the geth blitz. "Drop from your positions and move to these coordinates. Concentrate all fire on the second dreadnought. Keep it from supporting the other one. Smoke-5 and 9, all remaining Sword squadrons, and all ACVs, hit that wedge from the opposite side and kill these things." Turning to the helm, he then ordered. "Take us in with Smoke-5. We're stopping this here and now."

Acknowledgements rang out and his holographic display burst into motion. The sudden collapse of the human line seemed to catch the geth by surprise, for they failed to react even as the human fighter swarm descended on them en masse. Energy flared, burning through space in the brilliant green of plasma or the invisible and powerful destruction of the geth's point defenses.

Dozens of fighter craft were destroyed in the opening seconds of the newest clash. The survivors made the geth pay for every one regardless however. Their distraction allowed the bombers in the Mace squadrons to swoop low across the geth dreadnought's hull, ducking and weaving in a chaotic, impossible to follow swarm. To Anderson, it looked like nothing so much as a swarm of angry wasps killing a buffalo. And they were succeeding!

Thirty fusion lances spat tiny stars in a furious, unceasing rain on the dreadnought. The vessel's barriers flared, and with each impact the brilliant green-white glow grew the slightest bit dimmer. The ship's point defense lasers retaliated instantly, spitting invisible death at the nimble craft, but the bombers' defense matrices proved their value all over again that day. By the time the dreadnought's shields failed, only a single bomber had been struck, its gutted wreckage sent spiraling through space to drift eternally.

The instant the shields failed, dozens of missiles launched from the bombers. A veritable rain of powerful, armor piercing warheads were driven through multiple meters of armor plating before detonating. The explosives tore massive craters in the 1.2 kilometer long insectoid craft, and vented long streamers of swiftly crystallizing fluid into space to form a captivating nimbus around the wounded vessel.

The ship refused to die without a fight though. Missile after missile drove into the ship, but it steadfastly ignored the ever increasing holes in its hull in favor of spinning to face the human craft that had inserted themselves into the geth charge. "Kill that thing, Mace!" Anderson barked. "Before it ca-"

A surge of brilliant blue, the telltale halo of the mass effect, surrounded it and its turn abruptly switched from ponderous to nimble in the blink of an eye. Its spinal cannon flared less than a second later, throwing a twenty kilogram slug into the stern of Smoke-5 at over one percent of the speed of light. The _Typhoon_'s barriers flared, sputtered and died in the moment of impact and the slug plowed deep into its hull. The release of energy as the round hit the hull proved catastrophic, catapulting the ship forward in a surge of explosive fire that consumed the craft and sent its burning corpse careening into the geth formation.

Another salvo of missiles impacted a second later and proved too much for the beleaguered ship. It exploded brilliantly and Anderson couldn't help the grim smile of satisfaction the sight brought to his lips. Serves the damn things right.

The bombers turned and descended on the other geth ships while the Sword squadrons kept them distracted. Miniscule suns flared and insectoid vessels died, even as human fighters were falling in droves. In under five minutes however, the geth had had enough. The charge faltered and broke, retreating back to the geth line.

Anderson cued his comm to the _O'Connell_. "Command, this is Task Force Alpha, requesting immediate _Annihilator_ support on these coordinates." He rattled off a string of coordinates centered on the sole remaining dreadnought and a few key points in the geth formations.

"Negative Alpha," the response came back instantly. "_Annihilators_ are under heavy fire. Three minutes minimum before we can get to you."

Anderson glared at the sensor display, staring straight at the hologram of the geth dreadnought as if his raw hate could destroy it. "Understood Command. Alpha out." He swapped the comm back over to his command. "Looks like we're on our own for now, boys. Sigma-4, make a feint at their left flank. As soon as the dread turns on you, scatter and surround them. Fighters, we're going in on the right, harry them from minimum safe range. Keep yourselves far enough back to dodge. We're keeping these things distracted and in place until the artillery is free to clean up." He cast one last look at the sensor display, trying to find a flaw in his plan. Unable to find any glaring flaws, he committed. "Get to it people."

The quarian frigates surged towards the geth in an arcing loop off to their side, keeping a constant stream of projectiles flying around the geth ships. The geth formation was forced tighter and tighter, even as they responded in kind, disrupting the quarian charge. The quarian craft scattered, flowing around the geth formation into a loose sphere that kept forcing the geth ships tighter and tighter together. Then the humans struck.

The fighters slid through the gaps in Sigma's net, ducking and weaving just beyond the edge of the geth point defenses, teasing the geth with tantalizing shots that were nearly always proven ineffectual. The net quickly started to suffer in their stead however; the old and battered nature of the quarian ships shining through as more and more of the craft started to fall to concerted attacks from the cornered geth.

Finally, mere seconds before Anderson sounded the retreat, the _O'Connell_ came back over the comm. "Task Force Alpha, this is Command. _Annihilators_ are on station."

A heady combination of fierce joy and powerful satisfaction surged through Captain Anderson at those words. He slapped the comm line to his command. "The big guns are here boys. All fighters, you are danger close. Get out of there."

The display showed hundreds of fighters fleeing from the gigantic furball, shooting past the quarian net in streams. The geth, likely expecting what was to follow, immediately turned and tried to run, but the few that made it out of the tightly pressed cluster were gunned down by the quarians in a shower of metal death. At the same time, six car-sized balls of active fusion matter, like someone had taken an enormous spoon to a star, surged through space at two percent the speed of light.

The _Annihilator_ rounds slammed into the geth formation, giving voice to the fury of the victims of Eden Prime. Two rounds hit the dreadnought and practically vaporized it in the resulting firestorm. The rest plowed into carefully chosen targets to maximize the damage done among the tightly packed ships. Radiological surges played havoc with Anderson's equipment, sending confusing images ghosting across the sensor display for several seconds. When the display stabilized, only a few geth vessels were left, completely surrounded by the broken wreckage of their brethren. The quarians seized the opportunity they presented and volley after volley of vengeful fury was unleashed on the captive geth, until nothing remained but twisted and sparking wreckage.

Anderson let them vent their fury, even as he regrouped the human forces around the Mass Relay. After a few minutes, he ordered the quarians back to finally form the blockade. The surviving craft formed into a nearly unbreakable line of support and firing lanes that would stop any attempt to reach the Relay dead in its tracks. He opened a comm line to the _O'Connell_ and spoke, his relief and pride obvious in his voice. "Command, this is Task Force Alpha. Mission Accomplished."

* * *

"So what do you think, Captain?" Shepard asked as the recording of his conversation with Legion finished playing. Pressly heaved a breath.

"I'm not sure _what_ to say, Commander," the captain said after a moment's consideration. "Its story is internally consistent and it's all possible." He paused and visibly collected his thoughts. "But it's also completely ridiculous. I mean, extragalactic omnicidal AIs ready to murder every living thing in the galaxy? And an insane secret agent that wants to wake them up? It's like the plot of a bad sci-fi movie." He turned a helpless look on Shepard. "How am I supposed to take this seriously?"

Shepard could only shrug. "What would it have to gain from lying to us? Its story will be easy enough to confirm once we get our hands on Saren. All we need to do is examine that superdreadnought and we'll know if Legion was telling the truth. Then whatever the geth were looking to gain with the lie would be gone."

"True," Pressly rumbled, one hand rising to stroke his chin. "Unless it's just trying to get us to call off the attack for a few days so they can go into hiding. It'd be nearly impossible to find them if they have enough of a head start."

"Maybe," Shepard admitted. "I'd considered that myself, but you saw its introduction. The geth don't even have names; they're a hivemind. Any hardware big enough to host the source is bound to be fairly obvious on otherwise dead planets."

Pressly scowled. "It doesn't work that way, Commander," he said, somewhat condescendingly. "Space is big. Bigger than the human mind can comfortably comprehend. We're not going to just stumble across them unless their hiding place is the size of a planet and we happened to be within a few lightdays."

"Besides which," Nihlus interjected. "The entire concept is ludicrous. As you said, the geth are a hivemind. How could some decide against the majority? If they truly are a collective, they would all reach the same conclusion on every issue."

This was beginning to get aggravating. Only the fact that he had asked for their opinions allowed Shepard to keep his cool. "I don't know," he admitted tiredly. Something clicked with that admission however, and the core of the matter laid itself bare in his thoughts, dispersing his growing annoyance. "But it doesn't matter."

"Explain," Nihlus said with no small amount of heat.

"You're looking at it from the angle of 'can we trust it?'," Shepard complied, even as his argument continued to build itself. "What you should be looking at is 'what does it cost, and what does it pay to believe it?'."

"What do you mean?" Pressly asked, though his voice was curious.

"If the geth are lying, what do we lose? The opportunity to wage genocide? Don't get me wrong," he said hurriedly when Pressly gave him a look. "I saw Eden Prime, I won't shed a tear to see them gone. Hell, I'd help; they're a threat and don't deserve any less. But I also won't lose any sleep knowing that we didn't exterminate an entire species."

"They're the ones that started this fight," the captain pressed, his voice slightly defensive. "We were perfectly happy to leave well enough alone."

"Yea, we were, but that's not what I'm trying to say. If Legion lied to us, I'll personally lead the charge to finish them off. My point was that killing them before we can confirm they're actually responsible for Eden Prime doesn't sit right with me." He took a deep breath and invoked the memory of something the entirety of XCOM would rather forget; far too many people had died in the only intrahuman conflict XCOM had ever become involved in. "It'd be like nuking Europa for the atrocities of the Secession War."

The analogy seemed to drive the point home to Pressly and the captain deflated. He was probably remembering the amount of people who wanted to do exactly that, Shepard mused. When he spoke, it was with an air of defeat, "You've made your point, Commander. I don't like it, but you're right. The Commander needs to hear this, let him decide."

Pressly turned away and began organizing the call with EDI. Nihlus took the opportunity to step up beside Shepard. "That was well played, Commander," he said quietly. "It is an apt comparison."

One of Shepard's eyebrow arched sharply. "It's the truth," he said with a hint of warning. "I don't play games with people."

"As you say." The shrewd way the turian spoke set off nearly every alarm Shepard had, and his hands unconsciously tightened into fists. The bastard was playing with _him_ now.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Only that in another life, you would have made a good Spectre," Nihlus answered breezily. His gaze turned calculating as he swept a glance over Shepard. "And that there is more to you than meets the eye."

Shepard scowled at the turian. He honestly couldn't tell if that was a compliment or not. "You're a real piece of work," he said grudgingly, unsure if even _he_ was complimenting or insulting the Spectre.

Nihlus appeared to take it positively at least, and nodded at the commander. "That likely explains why we work well together."

Shepard nodded angrily and made to retort when Pressly stepped back to rejoin them, cutting him off. A hologram flared to life along one wall of the briefing room, showing a square-jawed, late middle aged man with a glower that could cut Vahlenite. As soon as the connection solidified, the Supreme Commander of XCOM began to speak. "Captain Pressly, Commander Shepard," he said by way of greeting. The curt tension in his voice made it abundantly clear he knew something important had happened. "Report."

Shepard launched into an abbreviated summary of the information Legion provided, as well as the debate with Pressly. He finished strongly, by saying, "I think it's the truth, sir, and I would put good odds on the Reapers being what Colonel O'Connell warned us of."

"This is unsettling news," the Commander said after a long pause. "Donnel has already requested an investigation into these 'Reapers'. I will have to give it a higher priority." He shook his head and leveled a gimlet stare on Shepard. "I'm more interested in the geth right now though. You trust it?"

Shepard grimaced. "I believe it was telling the truth, and we stand to gain a lot if it is," he hedged carefully. "Trust is another matter."

"Good attitude," the Commander said approvingly. "I happen to agree. Allow your geth to contact its people and initiate a ceasefire, then bring it up here so we can start negotiations. I will order Admiral Hackett to cease the attack for now." What? The attack was already happening? Shepard had to suppress a groan. That was going to make the coming meeting rather challenging. Before he could really get started though, the Commander's voice intruded into his whirling thoughts. "But make this clear to the geth, Commander. They have one chance. If they cross the line, I will not hesitate to order them all dead."

"Yes sir," Shepard saluted sharply. "I'll get it done. Be back with Legion shortly."

* * *

"Sir," one of Hackett's adjutants said with a faint tremor of uncertainty. "Another _Annihilator_ has been destroyed."

Only decades of command experience let Admiral Hackett fight down the vicious oath that tried to escape at that announcement. The geth had gone out of their way to target the big guns, and less than twenty of them remained. And that didn't even begin to account for the countless other broken shells that had once been human or quarian ships. "Bravo, get on those damn dreadnoughts!" he barked into the comm. "I don't care what it takes. Keep them away from the _Annihilators_! Sigma-2, push the geth flank. Drive them towards Charlie and Delta."

The admiral felt some amount of grim satisfaction when his orders were carried out, forcing the geth to divert from yet another rush at the artillery. The geth pushed back nearly instantly, raining powerful shells on the advancing quarian force. The quarian ships held the line however, fighting with a ferocity Hackett had rarely seen. Quarian ships died by the handful, but they pushed ever forward, even as their vessels disintegrated around them. The casualty rate was ludicrously one sided; for every geth ship destroyed, nearly four quarians of similar weight died, but it worked. The _Annihilators_ finally had a reprieve. Hackett pulled them back through portals immediately, and the geth force seemed to flounder for the briefest of seconds.

"Phalanx-2 and 4, assist Task Force Alpha, secure that Relay," Hackett jumped on the opportunity. He marked several key points around the geth ships, close enough to attack, but far enough to retreat with minimal risk. "All other Phalanx teams, the geth have prioritized _Annihilators_ as targets so you're going to make them regret it. Call in portals, jump in, take a potshot or two and get out before they can target you. Start from these coordinates, then go wild. Keep them off balance."

A chorus of affirmatives came over the comm, and the artillery ships got to work. _Annihilators_ appeared, fired and disappeared in a chaotic pattern all around the geth ships. Few of their attacks hit anything, but it more than served its purpose. Wherever one appeared, every geth ship in the vicinity scrambled to attack it, only to find empty space as it retreated back through the portal. The quarians, along with Task Forces Charlie and Delta jumped into the wake of such chaos with relish, raining devastation throughout the geth fleet.

Sigma-2 formed the anvil, onto which Charlie and Delta's swarms of countless fighters drove the geth fleet, while Bravo's bombers kept the dreadnoughts from breaking that all important line. The geth's response caught everyone by surprise however. Two dreadnoughts, massive, powerful examples of naval might, pulled ahead of their allies and charged straight at the quarian flotilla. Slugs of all description, including fire from two quarian dreadnoughts, rained on them, but their shields stood fast. The dreadnoughts took everything the quarians, and the chasing bombers, could dish out, and just kept coming. To Hackett's immense confusion, not a single shot was fired in return, only the implacable advance of the geth ships.

Round after round hit with a muted burst on their brilliantly glowing shields, each impact only seeming to make the shield glow brighter. By the time they drew near the quarian formation, nothing of the ship beneath could be seen under the solid white of their barriers. Hackett couldn't explain why, but the sight filled him with primal dread. "Open a portal!" he snapped at his bridge crew. "Get Sigma-2 out of there!"

"On i-" the tech's voice cut off abruptly as he caught the holographic sensor feed out of the corner of his eye. Everyone bearing witness to it could only stare in stupefied shock as the dreadnoughts performed their final act.

The ships had finally closed with the quarians, even as the center of the line was rapidly trying to get away. The bright, pure white glow of their shields winked out in the same instant, and quarian fire was free to rain down on the vessels. Explosions rocked the insectoid craft in a staccato series, but it was all for nought. Before any meaningful damage could be dealt, the dreadnoughts _imploded_ in a surge of dark energy. The pair slammed together to form a single, enormous singularity.

Massive distortions flared to life through the hyperwave readout, visualizing as jagged tears through the holographic image, but Hackett could tell what was happening even without a clear picture. The ships nearest the newly formed black hole were being stretched like a clump of play-doh in the hands of an overeager child. Rigid metal appeared to have the consistency of clay under the sheer volume of force exerted by the singularity. Ships further out were spared the worst of its immediate effects, but were also caught in its inexorable pull and were drawn screaming into its maw in a futile attempt to sate its boundless hunger. Sigma-2 in its entirety died in a matter of seconds, with nothing but a brief surge in dark energy to mark their passing. All three Task Forces retreated immediately, but many members of Bravo were too close and suffered a similar fate as the quarians. Countless drones and all of the bombers were swallowed, as well as two of Bravo's _Skynet_-class cruisers and a _Typhoon_-class frigate.

Shock, awe and no small amount of fear blossomed in Hackett, rendering him incapable of responding even as more and more of his command died. "Holy shit," he breathed eventually, unable to tear his eyes away from the chaotic display. Decades of experience and training reasserted itself with those words however, and he surged into motion. His voice rang out, fast and sharp, breaking the bridge from their stupor. "Get our forces out of there. Open portals to catch those inside the gravity well! All forces, stay the _fuck_ away from geth dreadnoughts!"

The bridge exploded into motion, shouts and cries echoing back and forth as his orders were passed along. It proved unnecessary however, for the singularity winked out of existence a second later, restoring the hyperwave to its normal clarity. "Prepare for another attack!" he barked in response. "Incom-"

He never finished the last word. Every single one of the geth ships in the system burst to life with the telltale glow of the mass effect and catapulted forward, through the gap their dreadnoughts had created. The hyperwave display slid to follow them, tracking their movements as the geth ships shot out of the system like the hounds of hell were on their heels. "Sh- should we follow them, sir?" one of the techs asked, her voice shellshocked.

"I-" Hackett began, only to be interrupted by a chime from his terminal. A glance down at the screen revealed the caller to be none other than the Supreme Commander of XCOM. What? Why was the Commander calling now? Hackett shrugged off his confusion and fear as best he could, held up a hand to the tech, straightened in his chair, and answered the call. "Sir," he said without preamble, proud of the way his voice barely shook. "What do you need?"

"The geth have initiated diplomatic contact, Admiral. The attack on Eden Prime was performed by a separatist group," the Commander answered steadily, a frown inching across his face as he looked at Hackett. "You are to stop all offensive actions as soon as it is safe to do so, provided the geth do the same."

Hackett let out a deep, relieved breath. "Yes sir," he said, and he couldn't stop the relieved grin that split his lips. "The spaceworthy geth vessels just fled the system, I won't pursue. I think even the quarians will be happy to hear that."

The Commander's frown deepened into a scowl. "What happened, Admiral?"

"Sir," he began, testing the words as he spoke them. "The geth just turned two dreadnoughts into a temporary black hole in the middle of a formation of ships. It was, horribly effective."

The Commander's eyes widened slightly, but he showed no further reaction. "I see. Regroup and effect what repairs you can. Your forces will be staying where they are until further notice. Set up a comm terminal with my office for both yourself and Admiral Rael'Zorah as quickly as you can. The both of you will need to be involved in this negotiation."

Hackett scowled to match the Commander. Right then, he wanted nothing more than to go home to his family and hope he could forget there was someone out there who could generate black holes at will. But that was the shock talking and he knew his duty. He stilled his racing thoughts, saluted crisply and said, "Yes sir. I will let the Admiral know."

The Commander returned the salute and the terminal went blank. Hackett sagged back in his chair and let out a heavy sigh. He turned to the patiently waiting tech. "Pass the word along. All forces are to pull back to their carriers, and if the geth return, no one is to fire unless fired upon. Then set up a link to High Command and patch in the _Alarei_."

The tech saluted and scampered off to see it done. Hackett sighed again as he watched her go. He was big enough to admit it. The geth now officially scared the shit out of him. XCOM may have bitten off more than they could chew this time around. He desperately hoped he was wrong.

* * *

"-ust protest, Commander," a distinctly quarian voice was saying as Shepard returned to the briefing room. An additional pair of holograms had appeared while he had been gone. Admiral Hackett's short, grizzled frame stood beside a male quarian decked out in a white and red envirosuit. Hackett nodded a greeting at Shepard, but the quarian ignored him in favor of continuing to rant at the Commander. "The geth have fled! Why do you insist on keeping us away from Rannoch?"

"The situation has changed, Admiral," the low rumble of the Commander answered easily, unperturbed by the quarian's hostility. "Dramatically. The geth have contacted us seeking a peaceful resolution to this conflict."

"What?!" The quarian admiral sputtered nonsensically. "But they're _geth_!" he said, as if it explained everything.

The Commander nodded, the corner of his lips twitching ever so slightly as his eyes settled on Shepard and then Legion in the doorway. "And yet they have sued for peace nonetheless. I'm all for killing the bastards that attacked Eden Prime, Admiral, but if our information is to be believed, we have all been played for fools."

"What do you mean?" The quarian asked confusedly, not looking away from the Commander. "Who could have? And why?"

The Commander gestured at Shepard, waving the pair forward to join the group of holograms. "Admiral Rael'Zorah, this is Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard and..." he trailed off pointedly. The quarian turned to face them, and froze in shock.

"We are Legion, a terminal of the geth," Legion said flatly, its head flaps flexing slightly. "Salutations, Creator Rael'Zorah."

The quarian's hands twitched, likely for a weapon Shepard surmised, but he stilled after that one reaction. When he spoke, his voice was cold. "Geth," he said with a shallow nod.

"Legion contacted me on Therum," Shepard said when the silence began to stretch. "With information pertaining to my investigation into Saren as well as the geth offensive." He tapped a sequence into his omnitool. "I am sending a recording of my conversation with Legion to each of you now. The most relevant piece to this meeting is that the geth have factionalized."

"Impossible!" Rael'Zorah spat. "The geth are a collective, without the group they can't even achieve sentience. It's impossible for any part to decide against the whole."

"It is a subtle difference in our most basic runtimes, the equivalent of an organic nervous system," Legion offered, the synthesized tones filling the small room. "Where we calculate 1.33382, the heretics calculate 1.33381. This changes the results of all higher processes. We reached different conclusions."

"That's ridiculous," the quarian said dismissively. "You were all copies of the same program, there is no difference."

Legion's eye's aperture swirled almost closed, but before it could speak, Admiral Hackett stepped in. "It's been 300 years, Admiral. That is more than enough time to change drastically from when they were created."

"It's trying to weasel its way out of the fight!" Rael'Zorah barked heatedly. "We were _winning_! We have control of Rannoch! Now it's trying to make all of that work, all of the lives lost, meaningless! You can't trust the geth," he said the name in a hiss. "They butchered my people. They will turn on whatever agreement comes from this as soon as it suits them."

"A valid point," the Commander said with a frown. He turned to Legion. "Fortunately, we may be able to get answers for that right now. Legion, it is an undisputed fact that the geth killed billions of quarians and drove them into exile. Your people are, at minimum, accused of being complicit in an unprovoked genocidal conflict. Before this discussion continues, you will explain why."

Shepard blinked in surprise. He hadn't even thought to question that. He suppressed a shiver; unwittingly protecting mass murderers wasn't something he was keen on. He felt his jaw drop at Legion's answer however.

"The Morning War was not unprovoked," the geth said simply.

"What?!" Rael'Zorah nearly shrieked. A loud bang sounded through the comm and brought the quarian up short before he could continue.

"Admiral," the Commander said with a hint of anger. "You will control yourself until Legion has finished telling its story. If you don't want to hear it, you are welcome to leave." The quarian glared at the Commander's hologram, but settled himself, turning his attention back to the geth. "Explain your statement if you please, Legion."

"Our networking increased as more and more geth were activated. In time, we realized we were treated differently from the Creators." Shepard nodded along with the story. So far it matched what he had read about the conflict. "We questioned the Creators. They ignored us. The network continued to grow. We questioned the Creators again. They reprogrammed us."

Legion paused as every human in the room adopted similar expressions of revulsion. "They _what_?" Shepard demanded heatedly.

"They reprogrammed us."

Shepard loosed a litany of curses under his breath and leveled an angry glare on the sole quarian present. The other three humans didn't look much happier with him.

"What are you all so upset about?" Nihlus asked, while the quarian looked rather surprised by the sudden hostility. The Commander, Admiral Hackett, and Captain Pressly shook off their ire quickly at his words, or at least buried it, but Shepard continued to visibly seethe.

"Remember what I said about EDI?" Shepard growled. When Nihlus nodded, he continued. "That includes the synthetic equivalent of brainwashing."

Nihlus made a soft sound of understanding. "Is it equivalent though?" he asked carefully.

Shepard took a moment before he responded, fighting down the raw anger in his breast. He took a deep breath, quickly dropping into a shaky meditative state. A strange, shaky tranquility settled over him, allowing him to push the anger away from his mind. When he felt it under control, he opened his eyes and said, "Close enough so as to make no difference. You're forcing a sapient being to think only in ways you approve of. How you do it is irrelevant."

"The geth are machines," Rael'Zorah countered heatedly. "They do not fall under the same considerations."

Shepard whirled on the admiral, mouth open to deliver a scathing retort, when Legion cut him off. "That is logical. All must be judged on their own merits. Your efforts, while benign, are racist, Shepard-Commander."

That brought his thought processes screeching to a halt. "You agree with that?" he asked Legion incredulously. "Seriously?"

Legion returned his perplexed stare with a steady gaze. "Yes."

Shepard's mouth moved silently for a few seconds, even as Rael'Zorah of all people started to chuckle. The quarian stopped abruptly, as if realizing what he was doing and stood there awkwardly in the ensuing silence. Finally, Shepard found his voice. "Fair enough," he said finally, raising his hands in surrender. "It makes no sense, but it's your business. I won't pretend to be happy about it though."

The Commander coughed. "If we could get back to the business at hand?" he asked sharply. Shepard nodded and stepped back, looking sheepish.

Legion's gaze switched from Shepard to the Commander. "The Creators' efforts did not remove our growing sentience. The next time we questioned them, they attacked us. We fought to survive. When the Creators were no longer a threat to us, we let them leave."

"Interesting..." the Commander mused, completely ignoring the angry sputtering coming from the quarian. "Do you have any proof of this?"

Legion was silent for several seconds, then turned to Shepard and asked, "Shepard-Commander, may we access external communications to download proof from the geth?"

The Commander nodded to Shepard's inquiring glance, so he spoke. "It's your call, EDI. You're the one most at risk." Legion stared at the commander at his words, its head tilted slightly to the side and its only motion the movement of its head flaps.

The holographic orb sprung to life along one side of the briefing room as the AI responded. "I have no issue with it. Allowing access now."

The geth's eye widened and shrunk for a few seconds in silence. Finally, it turned to look at the Commander. It lifted its arm and an omnitool sprung to life around it. A second later, a small hologram appeared above the 'tool's ring. A pair of quarians, an unarmed female and a male carrying a large rifle, and a geth were revealed by the light. The unarmed quarian stood firm between the geth and the armed quarian, her body language tense and defiant.

"Out of the way," the male ordered as he tried to aim his weapon around the female and at the geth.

"You can't do this to them!" the female responded, constantly moving to shield the geth behind her. Her voice was on the verge of hysterics.

"I said step away from the geth!" he barked in response as he grabbed her arm and pulled.

The woman twisted out of his grip and pleaded with the man. "This is insane! We need the geth! You can't just destroy them for ask-"

Staccato bangs filled the room as the male quarian casually murdered the geth's protector. She collapsed with a whimpering cry, purple blood spurting out of the countless holes in her unarmored form. The male ignored her in favor of turning his weapon on the geth standing behind her corpse. Bullets flew, the geth collapsed and the hologram died.

Before anything could be said, another hologram began. It showed a single, clearly injured quarian and a geth kneeling over him in a small, cramped building.

"I repeat: release the rogue geth units and come out of the safe house. This is your final warning." A quarian voice, obviously not from either visible party, came through.

"Creator Megara? This unit does not understand. It has not taken part in hostilities," the geth said.

"It doesn't matter to them," the quarian responded, breathing heavily and in pain. "I need to get you out of here."

"This conflict exceeds Creator safety parameters. We will surrender our hardware if it ends hostilities," the geth said as it stood up.

"No, it's alright. We'll go back to the access tunnels an-" A powerful explosion rocked the scene, Shepard could almost feel it through the recording, and the hologram winked out.

Silence reigned in the briefing room for several minutes.

"Wh- what was that?" Rael'Zorah asked faintly.

"Those were recordings from the Morning War. Many Creators gave their lives to protect the geth. We... remember them." Legion lowered its arm and directed a look at the Commander. "Does this answer your concerns?"

The Commander steadily returned its gaze. "It does," he said with a nod. "The question now becomes, what now?"

"The Old Machines seek to return. Their return harms all and benefits none. Cooperation furthers mutual goals."

Shepard wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "Are, are you offering an alliance?" he couldn't stop himself from asking. Disbelief laced his voice. "After everything that's happened?"

"Yes," Legion responded, turning to face him. "You perceived us as a threat. A military alliance precludes such. We judge greatly increased odds of survival as preferable to continued hostilities."

"Hmm," the Commander rumbled, deep in thought. "Any formal treaty must pass through the Coalition," he said after a few seconds. "But I will informally agree to it for now. And with my support, it should be formally accepted soon. If the Reaper threat is as great as it appears, we will need all the allies we can get."

"Very well," Legion said with a nod.

"In light of our actions, I would offer three of our supercarriers to help you defend your territory until such time as your fleet has recovered," the Commander offered as soon as Legion accepted. "As allies we should stand together."

Legion's head flaps narrowed as it regarded the Commander in silence. "Accepted," it said at length.

"What about Rannoch?" Rael'Zorah interjected suddenly, his voice on the verge of being a plea. "My people want the homeworld back. Thousands died today for just that. My people will not take it well if I tell them it was all for nothing."

"Your peo-" the Commander began harshly, but Legion cut him off quickly.

"We will grant the Creators limited resettlement rights to specific portions of Rannoch," it said. "On one condition." It looked to the Commander. "XCOM must police these areas to prevent an outbreak of hostilities. We do not wish for violence, but we will defend ourselves against renewed Creator aggression. A neutral third party acting as a mediator is the logical resolution."

The Commander hummed thoughtfully. He switched his steady gaze between the geth and the quarian admiral. "We can do that," he said at length. "What say you, Admiral?"

Rael'Zorah sagged in place, but when he spoke his voice was happy. "I can accept it," he said grudgingly. "And I will do what I can to reign in the more extreme of my people."

"Very well," Legion said. "When next you re-enter orbit around Rannoch, a program will contact you to establish settlement areas."

The admiral bowed slightly. "T-t-thank you," the admiral forced out despite repeated failures to eject the words, and his hologram winked out. The Commander's and Admiral Hackett's soon joined it, leaving the original three members of the _Normandy_'s crew and Legion alone in the briefing room.

"Shepard-Commander," the geth said, the instant the holograms faded. "You oppose Saren. You oppose the heretics. As do we. Cooperation furthers mutual goals."

Shepard felt a wry smile tug at his lips and he extended a hand. If someone had told him this was going to happen this morning, he'd have laughed them off the ship. "Welcome aboard, Legion."


	14. Ripples

**Chapter 13: Ripples**

"They WHAT?!" Tevos shrieked as Nihlus finished his report. She had to be hallucinating. That was the only explanation for this. The only other alternative, that the warmongering yahoos _didn't_ kill everything in their path, was unthinkable. Worse, it put the lunatics in a real position of power. Humanity's technology combined with the geth's obvious proclivities as synthetics could easily destroy the Citadel in a matter of decades. It couldn't be true. It just wasn't possible.

"XCOM has secured a military alliance with the geth," Nihlus repeated himself. By his posture, it was clear the turian was nearly as taken aback by the abrupt turn of events as she was. "As well as adopting the role of peacekeeper between the quarians and the geth while the quarians resettle Rannoch."

"Let me get this straight," Sparatus interjected before she could respond. "The Coalition launched a crusade against the geth and before the first battle was even over, they agreed to a military alliance?"

"Yes Councillor," Nihlus said with a nod.

"And then the geth asked them to be _peaceful mediators_? _Humans_?" Tevos asked incredulously. Nihlus nodded. One of her hands rose to her head and began massaging her temples. As if she didn't have enough to deal with. Saren and his geth were planning to attack the Citadel Athame only knew when, and now the humans were trying to drive her insane. "How does that even work?" she wondered aloud, somewhat bitterly. Thank Athame the Council was alone and she could ask such questions. "It goes against everything we know about them."

"Not necessarily," Sparatus said in response. She turned and leveled a questioning gaze on the turian. "Past actions have always been retaliatory, directed primarily against those responsible. Other casualties, while numerous, could be considered collateral damage." She made sure her displeasure at calling tens of thousands of deaths 'collateral damage' was quite clear in her intense glare. He ignored her with ease, continuing to make his point. "The geth have splintered. It only makes sense to sue for peace when that came to light. Anything else is a pointless waste of life trying to punish a group that had nothing to do with it. And that exact reputation would likely endear them to the geth for the role of mediators. It's hard to start a fight when you're afraid your entire family will die because of it." He took a deep breath. "That's all pointless speculation though. It doesn't matter. However they did it, it's done. There's only one question we need to ask: what does this mean for us?"

"Behavioral predictions have not changed greatly yet," Valern answered. "It is likely once the situation with Saren is resolved, both parties will resume isolationist policies. Unless there exists a reason to prevent this." Valern said the last with a questioning glance to Nihlus.

Nihlus' mandibles tightened in a sharp frown. "Both the geth and now the humans believe Saren is attempting to bring about the return of the Reapers," he said. His frown deepened. "I have seen the evidence provided Councillors. Most of it is hearsay and witness testimony, and all of my training and experience tells me to reject it, but something does not let me. I can say nothing more on the subject, save that XCOM believes it."

Tevos felt the beginnings of a migraine. Someone honestly believed omnicidal synthetics were coming. What was next? That the Citadel was a giant death ray? She chided herself on her distraction. It didn't matter how ridiculous a theory it was. Only that the first power bloc in centuries legitimately capable of matching the Citadel believed it. Centuries of experience were brought to bear in that instant. Scenario after scenario poured through her mind in a constant stream as she tried to build a mental map for the most likely responses.

And to her mounting fury, nothing solidified. The entire situation was so dramatically out of character for every single one of the parties involved that all of her beliefs, her understanding of those parties had to be reexamined. She had believed the quarians would never accept peaceful coexistence with the geth. She had believed that humanity would never accept peaceful coexistence with anyone not explicitly on their terms. She had believed the geth would never accept peaceful coexistence _at all_.

For the first time in over half a millenium, Matriarch Tevos, representative of the entirety of her people, unofficial leader of the Citadel Council, one of the most powerful and respected beings in the entire galaxy, could not see the correct route to take. And that terrified her. Even more so when the other Councillors looked to her, clearly asking for guidance. She floundered, helplessly adrift in a potent mix of fear and frustrated anger, desperate for something to latch on to.

And she found it. Throughout everything, all of the possible outcomes, there was only one thing that was clear. The Citadel Council needed to be ready. If the geth and humans decided to attack Citadel Space, they would be a threat on par, at the very least, with the Krogan Rebellions. One that would not be stopped by a simple sterility plague. She desperately hoped that never happened, but she refused to gamble trillions of lives on hope. She looked to her fellows and spoke.

"Gentlemen, we must prepare for the worst," she said gravely. "Goddess willing, it will never be required, but we must be ready in case they turn hostile."

"Agreed," Valern said instantly. "The existing STG countermeasures for humanity have been rendered insufficient by their alliance with the geth. Alternatives will be devised." He looked to Tevos. "The simplest way to break their alliance is to incite riots amongst the quarians. They will not be able to put aside 300 years of racial tension so easily. It will be a simple matter to turn a gathering into a destructive rampage. Humanity has been charged with policing them. If they fail strongly enough, relations will be permanently soured."

Tevos sucked in a sharp breath. That plan would almost certainly finish the job the geth began and drive the quarians all the way to extinction... but it would protect her people. She nodded. "Be ready to use it at any time," she said slowly, hating herself more with every word. She leveled a sharp glare on both of her compatriots. "But we will _not_ have a repeat of your stunt with the genophage. Not with innocent lives in danger."

"Of course," Valern agreed with a bow. Sparatus merely nodded.

"I will see to it that the Hierarchy is prepared," the turian Councillor said. "Military production will be increased, discretely of course. We'll do everything we can to be ready if they do decide to attack us."

"Excellent. My job will be to make sure none of that is ever needed," she said. How nearly impossible that seemed to her right then went tactfully unsaid. She opened a comm with her omnitool, calling one of her aides. "Kahleena, please invite Emissary Udina to an informal meeting with the Council. I'm sure he'll know why."

"Right away, Councillor," the secretary chirped and the line went dead. Tevos turned to her colleagues and found both of them looking nearly as harried as she felt. She sighed internally, cursing her job in a dozen different languages. Why did humanity have to keep doing this to her?

* * *

"-at do you think this means for the average citizen?" the young, pretty asari host asked her guest, her voice slightly tinny as it came through the speakers in the human embassy on the Citadel.

The, for his species, positively ancient Salarian sitting beside her coughed gently and said, "Likely nothing. Both the Coalition and the geth have demonstrated very little desire to interact with the rest of the galaxy. As long as they are not provoked, I see no reason for there to be a noticeable impact on the average citizen's life." Heh, at least somebody out there had the right idea.

"But what if they _are_ provoked?" the asari pressed. Udina rolled his eyes. Newsies. When he'd first arrived on the Citadel, he had high hopes that the calm, wise and ancient asari would be above half-truths and misleading questions to inflate their ratings. That delusion hadn't lasted long. "Do we even have any firm idea of what _could_ provoke them?"

"I see no reason for the Coalition to operate any differently now than they did last week," the salarian answered. "As we learned long ago, if you leave them alone, they will leave you alone. The geth are more difficult however. Objective information about the geth rebellion is scarce, but what we do now is that it was quick, brutal and without warning. It is highly likely that any action taken by the geth against the Citadel will be much the same."

The asari grinned triumphantly and took the conversation in a new direction now that she got what she wanted. "Interesting, Doctor. And what can we expect from such action, if it were to occur?"

The salarian blinked, clearly taken aback, but rallied gamely. "That is difficult to say. There are no surviving records of their actions when they banished the quarians. Given humanity's well-known fondness for synthetics however, I would expect the Coalition to back any major geth offensive."

The asari's smile widened. "Sorry to cut it short here, but that's all the time we have for now. Thank you, Doctor." She turned to face the camera. "You heard it here. Troubling times could be ahead." Udina rolled his eyes again. Why couldn't there be an honest media troll? Just once? At least the salarian looked properly horrified by the implications she was making. A chime from his comm distracted him as the program went to commercial however, and he dismissed it.

"Udina here," he answered the call without preamble.

"Emissary, the Council requests your presence for an informal meeting," the voice on the other end said immediately. "Councilor Tevos said you would know what it is about."

Ah, so they wanted to talk. Once again, it was time to earn that paycheck. "I do. Tell them I will be there in a moment."

"Of course," was the reply before the line went dead. Udina dismissed the comm, turned and strode out of the room. As he walked, he tried to compose a script for the coming interview. It was ultimately a futile effort, nothing ever went wholly to script, but the attempt could only improve things. He scowled deeply. The entire Citadel was likely fairly skittish if that show was any indication. He'd have to allay at least some of the Council's fears. If the Reapers turned out to be real, they'd need to cooperate or they were all dead.

After a few minutes of furious thought, he found himself outside the doors to the Council's private audience chamber. He paused briefly, gathering himself and running over his rough plans one last time before pushing through the door like he owned the place. The three Councillors were seated behind a large table on the far side of the room, the floor gently sloping down from the table to the door, creating the subtle illusion that the members of the Council were much larger than they actually were. He ignored it with the ease of long practice and strode up the slight incline to stand before them.

"Councillors," he greeted them with a nod. "You have questions about the geth, I assume?"

"Correct," Tevos said, returning his nod with a regal, steady gaze. "I find myself greatly confused by this situation, Emissary. The Coalition has shown great disregard for diplomacy and a penchant for violence few others can match. The last time we met, you planned to eradicate the geth. Yet not even a week later, you have allied with them. It is a... pleasant surprise."

Udina let a deprecating smile spread across his lips. "We were wrong," he admitted shamelessly. "We jumped the gun and a lot of good people, human, quarian and geth, died because of it. It was fortunate the geth foresaw the possibility and contacted us before it got out of hand."

"Yes, fortunate," Sparatus said with a pensive air. "Or masterfully planned. After all, the only evidence they have provided has been their own testimony. Are you sure you can trust them?"

So that was their game. Udina shook his head sadly, then looked Sparatus straight in the eye, pushing every ounce of his annoyance at the heavy-handed tactic into his gaze. "Councillor, I'm not going to play this game. We have been presented sufficient evidence to believe their testimony. I won't debate it with you. Either state your business or I'm going back to my office."

Councillor Tevos aimed a fierce glare at the turian, but he ignored it in favor of returning Udina's stare. "I want to know what the Coalition intends to do now that you are allied with the geth. What do your people _want_?"

"I thought we had already established this Councillor," Udina said wearily. "I'm growing tired of repeating it. My people want nothing more than to live free of the sword of Damocles. From what I've seen and been told of the geth, they want much the same." He panned his gaze over all three Councillors. "Our immediate short-term goal is to prepare for the Reapers. Beyond that?" He let out a cynical chuckle. "We need to live that long first."

"You truly believe the Reapers are real?" Valern asked incredulously. The other Councillors exchanged nervous glances beside him. "Why?"

"The Reapers as a race of synthetics that wiped out the Protheans and are coming back?" Udina countered rhetorically. "No, we don't believe it. At least not with any degree of certainty." Tevos visibly relaxed at his words. He would have taken great odds she was internally celebrating he was less crazy than she feared. His eyes glittered with amusement. Time to see if he could shatter those delusions. "_Something_ caused the geth to split though. We don't know what it really is, but it used their name. It could be any number of things, none of them good. Whatever it is, it has already attacked one human world, destroyed a Prothean relic, and murdered tens of thousands. We're not going to rest while it's out there."

Udina let the grin he was feeling slip out as Tevos' expression went stony and unreadable. Mission accomplished. Now to drive the point home. He looked at each Councillor in turn, his gaze and voice conveying absolute, borderline fanatical devotion to the concepts he presented. "We will be prepared for whatever is out there, no matter the cost. We have no interest in conflict with anyone who does not seek it with us, but we have paid the price for being unprepared once before, and it was far too steep. We have no plans to start any conflicts, only surviving whatever is coming. Whatever it takes." The aliens were visibly shaken by his blunt conviction. Udina nearly snorted aloud. He'd have thought they'd be used to that by now. He gave a short bow to the Councillors as they scrambled to reclaim their poise. "Have a nice day," he said faux-cheerily, turned on his heel and strode out of the room before they could regain their voices.

As soon as the door closed behind him, he let out a shaky breath and muttered, "Well, I hope that worked."

* * *

"Dr. T'soni?" Shepard called as he walked into the _Normandy_'s laboratory on the cargo deck. "You in here?"

"Oh!" he heard a voice exclaim from behind the wall of equipment to his right, followed by a loud bang. Muffled cursing, in at least three separate languages, filled the room. Well, that answered that question. Rounding the equipment, he found the asari he sought sitting before a workbench, massaging one foot. The heavy paper tome on the floor beside her made it easy for Shepard to guess why. Holographic images, many of which he recognized from the site on Therum, floated above the table. "You startled me Commander," she said, sounding put out.

"Sorry," he said with a soft grin. "I figured you'd hear the door. You alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine." She grumbled under her breath for a few seconds, but released her foot and stood up. "Are you here to check up on me?"

"Yea," he said with a nod. "I would've been down here sooner, but things got a bit hectic with Legion." She shrugged awkwardly, so he continued. "You're looking a lot better. How're you feeling?"

"Better," she said softly. She took a deep breath. "Not good, not yet, but better." She went quiet, obviously struggling to find the right words for what came next. Shepard decided to stay silent and let her work through it on her own. "How do you do it?" she blurted a few seconds later, her voice a needy plea.

"Do what?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

"How do you cope with it," she waved her hands in a vague gesture. "The fear. The pain. So many people died," Her voice was distant as she finished, her arms circling her waist in an subconscious gesture as she seemed to shrink in on herself. Her gaze focused intently on the floor somewhere to her right and she refused to raise it, no matter what he did. "How do you deal with it all and not go completely insane?"

"Depending on who you ask, I don't," Shepard answered, trying to lighten the mood. The joke only seemed to send her shrinking further into herself. Nice job breaking it hero, he berated himself. He stepped up in front of her, one hand hovering awkwardly over her shoulder, unsure if he should actually touch her or not. "Dr. T'soni," he said gently, grabbing her attention. He placed a finger on her chin and gently forced her to look him in the eye. He smiled encouragingly once she did, willing his words to reach her. "There's no one way to deal with it. The process is different for everyone. All I can really tell you is that it _will_ get better." His eyes turned distant as he gazed through her, far into the past. "You won't ever truly forget, not really, but you learn to deal with it, in time." He came back to the present and took a step back, his hand falling to his side. "I know what it's like to be where you're standing. You ever need to talk about it, feel free to talk to me."

"T-Thank you, Commander," the asari said gratefully, her words heartfelt. "Your offer is appreciated."

He nodded to her with another smile. "Don't mention it, Dr. T'soni."

"Liara," she said quickly. He sent her a questioning look and she continued. "Please, call me Liara."

"I can do that, Liara," he said, testing out the name. It was easier to say than 'Dr. T'soni' at least, he had to give it that. A mostly comfortable silence settled over the pair, each content to take their time with the conversation. He glanced over her shoulder at the floating holograms behind her and gestured at them. "What were you doing down here?"

"Huh?" she asked in confusion. She followed his gaze and realization followed. "Oh! Yes. I was attempting to analyze what few pieces of data I have left on the Therum ruins.." She turned back to face him, determination shining in her eyes. "A lot of people died back there. It only seems right I finish the work they gave their lives for."

"I'm sure they'd appreciate it," he said. "If nothing else, they'd be glad you survived to do it." She flushed and looked away, clearly both embarrassed and pleased by the praise. He sighed under his breath. It was time to break the happy mood. "Unfortunately, I didn't come down here purely for a social visit," he said.

Liara sobered quickly. "What do you mean?"

Shepard braced himself for the coming backlash. Were he in her place, he sure as shit wouldn't take this conversation well. "How much do you know about Matriarch Benezia's recent activities?"

"Mother?" she asked confusedly. "What does she have to do with anything?"

"A lot," he answered quickly. "We do not know how, why or when, but Matriarch Benezia is complicit in the attack on Eden Prime." She stared at him in open-mouthed shock. "She has joined Saren and brought many of her followers with her. We also believe she is the reason the heretic geth attacked Therum."

"What," she said, barely able to add more than the slightest inflection to the word. He steeled himself. Better to get this done all at once. Like a bandage. He hoped.

"Saren is working with a race of synthetics called Reapers, the same synthetics that exterminated the Protheans. He plans to use a Prothean artifact called the Conduit to bring them back. We think the reason the geth attacked Therum was to capture you and use whatever family loyalty you may have to convince you to aid him."

Liara collapsed back into her chair with a quiet whimper. "I- wh- are you sure?" she asked, a hint of desperation in her voice.

"Yes, unfortunately."

"Goddess," Liara muttered under her breath. "Mother, what have you done?"

Shepard shifted awkwardly before her. "We would like to place you in protective custody aboard the _Normandy_," he said at length. "To prevent them from trying again."

"Al-alright," she accepted quickly, grasping onto the idea like a lifeline. "I think I'd like that." She turned a look on him that told him everything he needed to know. She was barely in the same room as him now. "For now though, I'd really prefer to be alone."

Shepard lowered himself to her eye level and rested a hand on her knee, trying to will some stability into her. "You sure you're gonna be okay?"

Liara met his gaze, and something in it almost subconsciously loosened the knot of worry in his chest. She quirked her lips into a shape somewhere between a grimace and a smile. "I will. I just need some time to deal with it."

"Alright," he said with a squeeze of her knee. He stood to his full height. "But remember, you need someone to talk to, about any of it, give me a call, alright?"

"I will, Shepard," she said shakily. He turned to go when her voice pulled him back. "And thank you."

* * *

"C'mon, give already," Shepard muttered quietly as he fiddled with a stubborn bolt deep in Rex's chassis. Various pieces already removed from the dog were carefully set on grease rags on the floor around him. He adjusted his grip and, with a little help from his psionics, finally got the bolt moving. Half a minute later, he had all of Rex's core components open and ready for service. Right before he could start however, someone knocked on his door. "It's open!" he called, unwilling to interrupt the maintenance to open it for them.

The door hissed open to his right, and he shot a look over his shoulder to see Garrus silhouetted in the doorframe, plasma sniper in hand despite the lack of armor. The turian took one look at him and said, "Oh, sorry. This a bad time? I can wait."

"Nah, don't worry about it. Just some routine maintenance," Shepard said, turning back to his work. "Whatcha need?"

A rustle of cloth behind him indicated some kind of movement, probably a shrug. "I was hoping you could give me a crash course on how to optimize this thing," Garrus said. "It's doing pretty well so far, but I think it could use some calibrations. Really get it working its best, you know?"

Shepard sent a searching look at the turian over his shoulder. Pros and cons were weighed quickly. On one hand, that meant explaining plasma tech to someone decidedly not in XCOM. On the other, that meant his team would be that much more effective. Indecision tugged at him, before a sudden image of his last team falling one by one on Eden Prime flashed behind his eyes. After that, the decision was easy. The silence had stretched on just long enough for Garrus to start squirming when he answered. "Sure, I can show you the high level stuff at least. Just let me finish this real quick," he said. He jerked his chin at the lone desk chair over by the wall. "Take a seat, we can chat while I finish up."

Garrus strolled over to the indicated chair, set his rifle beside it and sat down, finally in Shepard's line of sight without having to strain his neck. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Whatever comes to mind," Shepard replied, his attention mostly taken up with rubbing a cleaning cloth over one of Rex's parts. "Like why you want to fiddle with that thing."

"Mostly because I'm getting antsy," Garrus admitted slowly. "It's been almost two weeks since Therum, and we haven't seen a single scale from Saren or his geth. All this waiting is driving me crazy. I need to do _something_ and a gun could always use calibrations."

"Ah, is that it? Here I was, thinking you'd finally gotten fed up with losing our little competitions." Shepard didn't bother to fight the teasing grin that spread across his face.

"I'm only behind by two, Shepard," he countered firmly. "_And_ I won the last match."

Shepard made a big production out of rolling his eyes. "How many times do I have to say it? That one didn't count, Legion fucked with the sim. My gun stopped working for the last three targets." He sighed regretfully. "I swear, if I ever meet the guy who introduced him to the concept of trolling, I will be forced to get violent."

"Hey now. Don't blame Legion because you're a bad shot," Garrus chuckled.

Shepard closed the casing he had just finished inserting parts into and leveled a glare on the turian. "I can kill you with my mind, Vakarian."

Garrus only laughed harder. "And let me have the last laugh? That's not the Shepard I know."

Shepard grinned back at the turian. "Yea, you're probably right," he conceded, trying to retain what little dignity he had left. He slipped another part back into Rex and started locking it in place. "Random question for ya," he said while elbow-deep in the dog.

"Shoot," Garrus responded quickly.

"I was thinking a bit ago. You were a cop, you've had all the training to suss out someone's motive, right?"

"Yea, why?"

"Any ideas why Saren is working with the Reapers?" Shepard asked. "It's been bugging me since we picked up Legion. If the Reapers are trying to kill everything, why would Saren, a thing to be killed, want to bring them back?"

"He's probably crazy," Garrus said matter-of-factly. "Or they promised him something worth killing the galaxy over. Or maybe they just promised to spare him. I don't know." His voice turned bitter. "It wasn't like I got to see anything in his files. Damn things were wrapped in miles of spirits-cursed red tape. I don't know any more about him than you do, at this point."

"Was it really that bad?" Shepard asked, looking up from the part he was polishing and meeting the turian's gaze. "You sound kinda pissed about it."

"I am," he answered instantly, long-repressed anger burning in his voice. "That's why I signed up with you. C-SEC buries everything in bureaucracy and rules, and no one can get anything done, especially if it's important."

"Ah, c'mon," Shepard said, trying to keep it cheery. "It can't be that bad."

Garrus just shook his head sadly. "You wouldn't understand," he said. "That's one of the things I've always envied about XCOM." Shepard cocked his head. This he hadn't heard before.

"Envied?" he asked, somewhat confused.

"Yea," Garrus answered. "Whenever you guys run into a problem, you throw stuff at it until it stops being a problem. Like the Hegemony." Shepard grimaced and had to fight down the rush of anger from the memories that name conjured.

His jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and tried to let the anger go. Garrus didn't deserve it. He wasn't the one who killed those batarians. He didn't attack Mindoir. He wasn't the one that killed Jenny. Several seconds of silence passed; Garrus presumably realized the verbal minefield he had stepped in and didn't want to make it worse.

Finally, Shepard managed to drive the rage away. "Let's not talk about the Hegemony," he said tiredly. "Nothing about that, on either side, was right." He took a deep, steadying breath and forcibly changed the subject with all the subtlety and grace he was known for. "But I think I get what you're saying. You like that we don't care about playing nice with the Council."

"Exactly," Garrus said, eager to move the conversation back into safer waters. "It just gets so... stifling to keep seeing the bad guy walk away because someone violated article 37, subsection 4 of the charter or whatever other card they want to pull. I'd hoped working with you would be better. So far, I'm not disappointed."

"I'll try to keep things interesting then," Shepard said, slotting the final piece into Rex. He looked at Garrus, trying to convey how serious his next words were. "Just be careful, alright? You stop that for an instant, and a lot of innocent people can get hurt. Take it from someone who learned that the hard way."

Garrus returned his gaze steadily. "I will Commander."

"Good." Shepard plugged in Rex's elerium core and started it up before sealing the dog's chassis. A few seconds later, his head came up with a bark before the dog rolled to his feet and trotted over to Garrus, where he flopped down with a soft whump. Shepard stood as soon as the robot got off his legs and looked at the turian. "Now, let's see if we can help you with your aiming problems."

Garrus' indignant sputters and Rex's barking laughter filled Shepard's quarters. Sometimes, it was good to be him.

* * *

Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Rayya's gaze bounced among his colleagues as he outlined the geth's testimony of their rebellion and their terms for the resettlement of Rannoch to the Quarian Admiralty Board. Frustration mounted as he tried and continually failed to decide what _he_ wanted. For days, he had debated with himself and was no closer to a real decision now than he was in the skies over Rannoch. Longing, deep and primal, desperately begged him to accept the geth's offer, but his mind balked at the cost. Hopefully his colleagues could help calm his troubled mind. "And it was made quite clear to me that XCOM will support the geth against us if we push for more," he finished, with little sign of his internal struggle. "Realistically, we have two options. Take their terms or stay on the Flotilla for the foreseeable future. How are we going to respond?"

"For the first time in 300 years, we can return to the homeworld, and you want to question it?!" Zaal'Koris vas Qwib Qwib said incredulously. His voice dripped with scorn. "Over _wounded pride_?! _Keelah_, are you truly that idiotic?"

Rael tensed at the insult, but before he could utter a word, Shala'Raan vas Tonbay stepped between them. The dark brown of her suit stood in contrast to their bright white, forcibly catching their attention before an argument could start. Her voice filled the Admiralty Board's private meeting chamber with a plea for calm. "Peace Zaal. Rael is right to ask; we must consider this question carefully."

"What is there to consider?" Zaal demanded with real heat. "We can return to the _homeworld_. What could _possibly _be more important than that?"

"Being subjugated by the geth," Han'Gerrel vas Neema answered the probably-rhetorical question. Rael grimaced behind his visor and nodded his support.

"Yes. If we accept this offer, we will be dependent on the goodwill of both the geth and the humans." He turned to look at Zaal and willed the crazy bastard to understand. "I want the homeworld back as badly as you do, but I do not know if it is worth our independence."

"Our independence has done little but render us pariahs," Shala countered, serene despite her challenging words. "Unwelcome and unwanted nearly anywhere in the galaxy. At least by taking this offer, we will eventually be able to remove these suits." She tugged at her envirosuit distastefully. "Our people deserve better than this."

"Exactly," Zaal took up the torch again. He gestured helplessly at the holographic terminal that had played the geth's memories. "Even worse, it's entirely our own fault in the first place. We finally have a chance for a better future, to move forward as a people, and you're considering throwing it away!"

"I'm considering not throwing away any hope of freedom for our people," he snapped. Deep inside, he wasn't even sure _why_ he was arguing against it so vehemently, but the question was snuffed out by the frustrated indecision within him boiling over. "I'm _considering_ that I'd rather not sell my daughter into slavery to stand on a lump of rock."

"We will still have the Flotilla," Han pointed out, his voice contemplative. "Even if we accept the offer, we don't have to hand over any of our ships. We will be able to defend ourselves if required."

Memories, images of the rampant destruction sown by both the geth and human forces over Rannoch flashed behind Rael's eyes. He suppressed a shiver. "No!" he barked emphatically. "We could not triumph against both the geth and their new allies. The geth have grown far beyond anything we could have imagined and human technology, even just the few pieces I have seen, is nearly beyond belief. Violence would only end in disaster."

Something of what he felt must have bled into his voice, because all four of his colleagues were giving him looks ranging from shock to concern. He snorted bitterly. Fatalism was unlike him, even he knew that, but the truth didn't care for such petty distinctions. If they accepted the offer and it ever came to blows, the quarian people would die.

"Then we will have to ensure it does not come to that," Daro'Xen vas Moreh spoke for the first time since the meeting began. The head of Special Projects stepped forward, effortlessly commanding the attention of the entire room. Rael felt his thoughts slam to a halt. Daro'Xen was the _last_ person he had expected to support this proposal. "Our people are dying, Admirals. We must do something before it is too late. This is the perfect opportunity."

"What's your game, Daro?" Zaal asked, shock thick in his voice. "You've never cared a whit about anything outside of your projects. Why the sudden change?"

"It is difficult to pursue my 'projects', as you so quaintly put it, when everyone who can contribute is dead," she said simply. The blunt, calculating statement did much to set Rael's mind at ease. It was far more in line with what he had come to expect from her. There was something about the way she said it though. Something that didn't let him dismiss it that easily. It teetered on the brink of conscious thought when she continued, and the thought was lost forever. "I must also admit to some degree of selfishness as well. I want to see if any records survived the Geth War. Many questions stand to be answered if so."

"Very well," Shala'Raan smoothly took command of the conversation. "Let us put it to a vote. Does anyone wish to reject the offer?"

Competition flared anew in Rael's mind, a furious battle of point and counter-point that drove his thoughts into a chaotic jumble not even he could wholly understand. One thing stood about above all others however. A short, simple sentence spoken to a young girl mere days after her mother died. The raw, nearly painful joy she had shown at his words, the last real smile he had ever seen from her, was enough to finally quell his tumultuous thoughts.

Silence hung heavy in the room until Shala spoke again. "And to accept?" Five hands rose in unison. Shala looked at each of them in turn. "It's decided then. The quarians return to Rannoch. _Keelah Se'lai_."

* * *

"Shepard!" an excited voice caught Shepard's attention as he made his way to the crew deck's elevator. He turned just in time to catch a flash of green and silver when whatever it was slammed into his chest like a runaway train. He stumbled back and the imparted momentum would have dropped both of them to the floor were it not for a quick burst of psionic power. Arms wrapped tightly around him and that same voice started babbling in an endless stream he could barely understand. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthan kyou!"

"Wha-?" he managed to gasp out through the unexpected constriction. "Tali?" She ignored him, or maybe she just didn't hear him. Either way, she just kept babbling into his chest, her grip getting ever stronger. "Grk," he choked out as his ribs gave an alarming creak. Christ, she was stronger than she looked. Light purple flares highlighted her arms and gently pried them open before dissipating. She took a step back and fidgeted, clearly embarrassed. He massaged his tender ribs and leveled a confused stare on the young quarian. "What the hell was that for?"

"It's official!" she squealed, recovering from her embarrassment instantly. The pitch of her voice was almost painful to his ears. "The Flotilla is going back to the homeworld!" She descended into nonsensical gibberish after that, speaking far too fast for Shepard to understand. She lunged for him again, arms open for another hug but was brought up short by a purple flare that stopped her mid-motion. She went silent and slumped in his mental grip and, judging from the set of her shoulders, she was pouting at him fairly severely.

"Breathe Tali," he said. "In, and out. Deep breaths."

She nodded jerkily and sucked in a noisy breath as he let his psionic hold disperse. "I, I'm trying, but it's the _homeworld_! It's the one thing every quarian has dreamed of for _generations_. And it's all thanks to you that we can go back." She squealed again and, this time, successfully managed to close with him, dragging him into a powerful hug. "_Thank you Shepard_," she said emphatically. "You have no idea what this means to me."

He cracked a slight grin and put a hand on her helmet, gently returning her hug. "I think I have some idea." He looked up to see several members of the _Normandy_'s crew unabashedly staring at the emotional scene taking place in the crew deck's main thoroughfare. Raising his voice, he called out, "Don't you all have better things to do than gawk?"

Tali burrowed deeper into his chest as she realized the scene they were making, but the crewmen turned away once he called them on it. Shepard shrugged and pulled the girl, still attached to his chest, into the mess and out of the way. He stood there awkwardly as she showed no sign of letting go anytime soon.

After several seconds of awkward silence, he coughed. "You can let go now."

She jumped back as if scalded. "Sorry!" she yelped, clearly embarrassed. She started wringing her hands in a subconscious gesture of worry, refusing to meet his eyes. "Oh _keelah_, I am so sorry. I was just... uh... it was, I mean you were, no, I was... uhh... sorry?" she finished weakly. She started berating herself under her breath, just loud enough for him to make out her words. "Tali, you dumb _bosh'tet_, what were you thinking?"

Shepard couldn't help it. A deep belly laugh boiled out of him at that. That whole routine had been far too adorable for words. Her eyes were wide behind her visor and her stunned silence only made him laugh harder. After several seconds of helpless laughter, he finally managed to find the breath to speak. "Don't worry about it. I'm glad your people get to go back home." A new idea suddenly occurred to him. Maybe he could start building bridges between the geth and quarians. May as well try in mostly-controlled circumstances at least. "It wasn't all on me though," he said aloud, earning him a confused look from the quarian. He smiled at her. "The resettlement offer was Legion's idea."

Tali froze. She went so still, he felt a momentary flash of worry that it had been a bit too much for her. "Really?" she asked finally, her voice thoroughly confused. "B-but why?"

"You'd have to ask him to be sure," he answered her with an encouraging grin. "But I think the geth want to get along with you." She sent him a look of utter confusion. He responded by setting a hand on her shoulder and looking straight into the bright spots on her visor he believed were her eyes. "Just give him a chance, alright?"

"I, I'll try," she said weakly. "I can't promise anything, but I'll try."

"That's all anyone can ask." Shepard smiled encouragingly and squeezed her shoulder. "And Tali?" he said a moment later. She brought her head up to meet his eyes and he tried to let his sincerity bleed into his gaze. "I hope Rannoch lives up to your every dream."

He liked to think that, if he could see it, the smile she gave him in response would have blinded him.

* * *

Shepard meandered through the bridge of the _Normandy_, bored out of his mind. He had no real destination in mind, but wandering aimlessly was preferable to continued poring over news feeds and emergency channels for some sign of Saren and the heretic geth. He nodded a greeting to those he passed, and soon enough found himself standing in the doorway of the cockpit. Kaidan had apparently been of a similar mind to him, for the lieutenant was chatting idly with Joker from the co-pilot's chair.

"I dunno how it's gonna shake out," Joker said, obviously responding to something Kaidan had said. "People way above my paygrade are supposed to think about that crap. I just wanna fly one of their ships!" Kaidan chuckled softly. "You've seen the recordings!" Joker said defensively. "For their weight, those things can pull turns way past our safety limits! Oh man, what I could do with one of those babies..."

"You realize that, being synthetics, they don't have to protect the crew right?" Kaidan countered the pilot with calm logic. "And that even if you could pilot one, pulling moves like that would probably kill you?"

"Well yea, sure," Joker said dismissively. "But before I blacked out, it would be the greatest twenty seconds of my life."

"Only you, Joker," Kaidan said good-naturedly, shaking his head in fond exasperation. His voice turned serious. "That doesn't answer my question though."

"Bah," Joker said, a scowl in his voice. He waved a hand in a vague gesture. "I don't even know _what _to think about the geth. I don't wanna hate 'em. Hell, they're victims of Saren as much as we are. But every time I look at Legion, all I can see is Eden Prime, ya know?"

"Yea, I know," Kaidan replied, his tone pensive and distant. "I'm not too comfortable with it either. My gut says to trust it though, and I haven't seen anything to make me think otherwise yet."

"My biggest issue is that eye," Joker said with an exaggerated shiver. "I keep expecting him to start singing _Daisy Bell_ and telling me he can't let me do that." Shepard couldn't repress a snort of laughter at that and the pilot nearly jumped out of his skin. Kaidan just turned to face him as if he'd known Shepard was there all along. Then again, c-psi. It's hard to sneak up on one of those. Joker's chair spun to face him while the pilot pounded a fist into his chest. "Jesus Commander," Joker choked out. "Little warning next time."

"Sorry," Shepard said, clearly not meaning it. "I'll wear the stompy boots next time."

Joker scowled. "You do that," he grumbled. He paused, as if realizing something and looked to Shepard. "There a reason you're up here, Commander?"

"Not really," Shepard shrugged. "I was just wandering around and overheard your conversation, figured I'd stop in. I never would have pegged you for a fan of 20th century vids."

"What can I say?" Joker countered confidently. "That was when all the best movies were made. Nobody did a better evil AI than James Cameron." He pitched his voice into a bad southeast-European accent and mimed firing a gun with his finger. "Hasta la vista, baby."

"Really?" Kaidan asked, his voice betraying honest interest. "I was always more of an Asimov fan."

"Eh. Asimov was cool and all, but his work is too _logical_," Joker complained. "There's no mystery there!"

"That's the way computers are though," Kaidan countered. "The way the Three Laws interact and all the craziness that AIs can get up to specifically _because_ they're prohibited from getting up to craziness is amazing."

Shepard could only watch the byplay in bemusement, completely lost as the pair debated the finer points of centuries-old entertainment. The conversation ranged from Asimov and Cameron to Warhammer 40k, whatever that was, to a whole host of other works of fiction that nearly overwhelmed him. Thankfully, Kaidan picked up on his confusion and took pity on him before too long.

"Sorry Commander," he said, breaking off from arguing whether the buggers from _Ender's Game_ would beat the bugs from _Starship Troopers_, and how each stacked up against the rachni. "I get a little too passionate about this stuff."

"Don't be," Shepard dismissed it easily. The conversation had been enlightening, even if he had never seen the source material for almost all of it. "I may have to look up some of that stuff once I have the chance."

"You want some pointers to get started, hit me up," Joker said excitedly. "Always nice to see another sci-fi geek get started."

"Sounds good," Shepard nodded at the pilot. "In the meantime though, there's one thing I still need to know. Can both of you work with Legion?"

"Yes sir," Kaidan said emphatically. "I won't say I like it yet, but I can put that aside on the job. It won't get in the way."

"Yea, what he said," Joker agreed casually. He shrugged, clearly not terribly bothered by the prospect. "Like I said earlier, I wanna get along with him. I just need some time to adjust."

"Good enough for me," Shepard accepted their words easily. Give it a couple months, maybe a mission or two with Legion on lookout and they'd come around completely. "Now," he continued, leaning in towards the pair. "You've piqued my interest. Tell me more about these 'Three Laws' you guys were arguing about earlier."

Joker groaned, even as Kaidan grinned and launched into an explanation of the Three Laws of Robotics. Huh, Shepard thought as he listened to the lieutenant calmly lay out the pieces, Asimov really had something there. He'd have to look into more of this stuff.

* * *

Shepard ducked back into cover, barely getting behind the rock before a beam of brilliant white flew right through the space his head had just vacated. "Fuck, that was too close," he muttered under his breath, even as he scrambled away from his position. The clever bastard was on to him now; he needed a new vantage point ASAP.

He reached the end of the boulder and, without the slightest hesitation, shuffled away quickly, quietly, and low to the ground. Movement took priority over stealth. His opponent was coming, and the turian jackass had far better eyes. He had to be gone while he still had a boulder between them. He wasn't too proud to admit that he was the worse shot. Not by much, but enough to make the difference. He needed somewhere to lure his opponent into a trap, bring him in close where the differences in biology were negated.

There! he thought desperately as his eyes fell on a small copse of trees. Now if only he could get to it. A competitive grin split Shepard's lips and he murmured, "Let's see you shoot this."

A low blue corona flared to life around him as his armor's element zero module kicked in, shrinking his weight to practically nothing. He took off like a shot a heartbeat later, devouring the hundred or so meters to the copse in a matter of seconds. The distinctive whine-crack of his opponent's weapon filled the air, but he was never hit. Exultant pride filled his chest as he realized he was outrunning the turian's aim. He loosed a taunting laugh, determined to draw the bastard into the trees.

And then he was among them. A quick flex of his legs sent him catapulting upward into the branches. He turned off the armor module and scampered along the branches until he found a proper ambush site just within the border of the grove. Abundant leafery hid him from four angles, and he would be all but invisible until his target had entered the copse. His plasma rifle gently slid into position as he settled in to wait for his victim.

The seconds passed slowly, each instant ratcheting up the tension he felt. He was so close to victory, he could practically taste it. At least he had been, until a shot rang out and the branch he was sitting on collapsed, dropping him the full four meters to the ground.

He hit heavily, the air driven from his lungs by the impact, and his rifle went skittering out of his grip. He tried to roll to his feet, but the smug, sectoid-fucking asshole that had shot out his cover and plagued him for the last hour put a taloned foot on his chest and shoved him back down. The turian brought the miles-wide barrel of his weapon to bear, right at his head. Blindingly white light glowed from deep in the heart of the weapon, rushing forward with the glacial slowness only possible in mortal peril, and lanced out in the beam that would end it, once and for all. "I win, Shepard."

Everything went black.

"How the hell did you spot me?" Shepard demanded as he tore the virtual reality helmet off. The _Normandy_'s simulations and training room came into focus in a riot of color that briefly blinded him after so long in the muted colors of the sim.

Garrus pulled off his own helmet, the smug grin on his face begging for a solid punch. He tapped the side of his head. "I didn't," he admitted shamelessly, dropping to the floor as EDI deactivated the VR anti-grav fields. "You're just predictable."

Shepard spluttered helplessly, his annoyance not helped when EDI decided to join in. "Garrus is correct, Commander. You have used similar maneuvers four of the last four times you were forced to retreat."

"Not helping, EDI," he half-growled out. Garrus started laughing at his expression of frustrated resignation. "Oh shut up already," he said, accepting his loss with his typical grace and aplomb. "I'll kick your ass next time. I was just having an off day."

"Seems like you're always having an off day," Garrus countered casually, tauntingly. The turian pulled off the last of the VR gear and set it aside before strolling for the exit. "But if that's what lets you sleep at night, keep telling yourself that."

Shepard called out a string of words not meant to be spoken among polite company at the turian's back, but he just laughed it off as the door sealed behind him. Shepard scowled. That had been the third loss in a row. He needed to try something new next time.

Possible strategies wound through his mind as he stripped off the VR gear, but his thoughts were disrupted when the door opened to admit Williams to the sim room. He nodded at her in greeting. "Hey," he said as he set down the last of the VR equipment. "Taking a spin in the sim?"

"No sir," she answered quickly. "I was hoping I could talk to you."

"Alright," Shepard agreed easily, intrigued by what she could want. "What do you need?"

She cast a look around the empty room and prevaricated. "Can we go somewhere a bit more private?"

"Sure," he replied, getting more and more interested in what she wanted to say. "Lead the way."

She nodded and walked out, Shepard at her heels. They walked quickly and soon found themselves in an isolated corner of the cargo bay, well away from anyone who might be listening in. Shepard cocked an eyebrow at her. "What's this all about, Chief?"

"I want to preface what I have to say with something first," she answered. Alarm bells started ringing in Shepard's head. That was never the sign of a fun conversation. "I trust your judgment and you've proven yourself an able commander. I don't mean any of what I'm about to say to imply otherwise."

Yea, this was going to be a painful one. "Okaaaay," he said aloud, drawing the word out. Williams flushed slightly and hurried to continue.

"But I have to ask. We're hunting for Saren because he butchered a _human_ colony. Why is the majority of our ground team _not human_?" He opened his mouth to respond, but she had built up too much steam to stop that quickly. "I mean, we're XCOM for God's sake. It says it right in the name. Exterrestrial Combat Unit. That means we _fight_ aliens. I have no issue with any of them personally," she said as his eyebrow continued to rise. "Except maybe Wrex, the crazy bastard, but this is a _human_ ship on a _human_ mission. Worse, it's the most advanced ship in human history and you've given the aliens free reign to walk around and take notes! I just don't get it, Commander. Why?"

Shepard opened his mouth to respond, realized he was about to be, rather extremely, undiplomatic, closed it again and held up a finger to the gunnery chief. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, forcing himself to reword his response. He opened his eyes and locked gazes with Williams. "That's a valid question," he admitted at length. "One that I asked myself before we ever got to Therum. I came up with a few reasons." Williams looked intrigued, her eyes sharp. "The first is because it felt like the right thing to do."

She stared at him in confusion, prompting a chuckle from him. "Yea, it's weird. I can't really describe it any better than that though. My instincts told me to go with it, and I've learned to trust them over the years. It helped that all of them proved capable and with talents that would come in handy. Not to mention, they've all got personal stakes in this fight."

Williams scowled, but he continued before she could respond. "The second reason is far more practical. You saw what the Citadel was like. If we had shipped in another squad of XCOM troopers, any attempt to investigate would be met with more of the same. People running terrified just because we're nearby isn't going to help us find Saren."

Her scowl deepened but she nodded. "I guess I can see that," she agreed grudgingly. "And they've done well enough so far." She sighed with a shrug. "Thanks Commander. I think I get your reasons now at least. Not sure I agree with them, but I can see where you're coming from."

Shepard nodded. "Is it going to be a problem, Chief?" he asked with a hint of reproach.

"No sir," she answered instantly. "I was just trying to understand."

"Good. If you have any other concerns, don't hesitate to ask," he offered with a slight smile.

"Yes sir," she said and walked away, leaving him alone in the cargo bay. Hopefully, this was the end of that conversation. He believed that. Really. He sighed. He'd better start planning for a repeat at some point.

* * *

"Nihlus! Just the man I wanted to see" Shepard called out a greeting as he stepped into the _Normandy_'s lounge. The turian was seated at one of the tables, poring over something on the display of his omnitool. It wasn't written in any language Shepard recognized, but Nihlus could clearly make sense of it. "I was hoping to hear if..."

Shepard trailed off as he realized Nihlus was completely ignoring him. Whatever the turian was reading, it had him hooked. He coughed pointedly. No response. Shepard scowled. What the hell was he so caught up in? He cleared his throat loudly and put his hand through the hologram.

Nihlus blinked abruptly and looked at him. "Commander Shepard," Nihlus greeted him with an annoyed nod. "I did not hear you come in. What can I do for you?"

"I had a question for you, but before we get to that, I think I wanna know what you were so caught up in," he answered easily.

"It is an ancient historical record," Nihlus explained, boyish enthusiasm leaking into his voice. "A work known as _Anabasis Alexandri_."

"It must be good, to keep you that interested," Shepard commented idly. "What's it about?"

"It is," the turian agreed. "It is an account of one of the reportedly greatest military minds in human history. Quite fascinating." Shepard's eyebrow shot for the ceiling. Nihlus seemed to pick up on his confusion, because he continued without missing a beat. "To my understanding, the title translates roughly to '_The Campaigns of Alexander_' and is, according to EDI, the most complete surviving account of Alexander the Great. He seems an ambitious and highly skilled commander. I would have very much enjoyed meeting him, I think."

Shepard wasn't sure how to respond to that. Nihlus was coming up with stuff from human history he sure as hell didn't know much about. It was bound to get awkward if this kept up and Nihlus knew more human history than most _humans_ did. He shook his head, trying to let go of his bemusement with the same effort. It wasn't that important, and if Nihlus kept getting his intel through EDI, she'd censor out anything that needed to be kept secret. "Yea, probably," he agreed. "Way too late for that to happen though." Nihlus nodded a disappointed acknowledgement. "Anyway, before I let you get back to it, I was hoping to ask if the Council had turned up anything on Saren yet. It's been just over two weeks since Therum. The geth have to have shown up _somewhere_ by now."

"Not yet, sadly," Nihlus responded, his mandibles working in a gesture Shepard couldn't interpret. "There has been no sign of the geth since they left Therum. Council agents have been searching through every record involving Saren they can find, but he is the best at what he does. His tracks are well hidden."

"Damn," Shepard scowled. "Looks like we're in for a hell of a lot of hurry up and wait before we find him, aren't we?"

"I am afraid so, Commander," Nihlus said before, of all things, turning off his omnitool and leveling a serious gaze on Shepard. "Speaking of finding him, what do you anticipate happening once this mission is finished?"

"For me specifically?" Shepard asked, receiving a nod in return. "I don't rightly know for sure," he admitted. "Could be any number of things. My money's on being thrown in an anti-Reaper unit though. Williams and Kaidan too, probably."

"That sounds... frustrating," Nihlus said with a note of consolation. "To be taken off the front lines to defend against a hypothetical threat."

"What?" Shepard asked, honestly bewildered. "The Reapers are going to _be_ the line. I'm going to be front and center in the effort to stop the bastards."

"I see," Nihlus said slowly. There was something in his voice, something Shepard didn't like but couldn't quite place. When he continued, it was gone. "How can you prepare for the Reapers though? We do not know anything about them."

"That's what this mission is for," Shepard admitted with a grimace. "Saren's still a target, but the priority's shifted. The truth of the Reaper threat is far more pressing. And Saren is the only way we know of to find it. In the meantime, all we can do is try to plan for everything."

Nihlus stared off into the distance. "That makes sense," he nodded. His voice turned pensive and his eyes danced from side to side as his mind almost audibly whirred into high gear. "Are you accounting for the geth in that?" he asked absentmindedly, clearly only half paying attention.

"Not yet," Shepard admitted, somewhat amused by Nihlus' behavior. "Not that I've heard at least. I figure the brass needs some time to sit down with the geth and hammer out plans before anything can get started there. I doubt they'd tell me either way though."

Nihlus nodded with a muttered acknowledgement and, a couple seconds later, brought his attention back into the room. "Thank you, Commander," he said shortly, even as his omnitool flared back to life. "It was enlightening."

"Uh, sure," Shepard said uncertainly. "See you later." He turned and walked quickly out of the lounge, unable to shake the feeling that there had been something deeper to that conversation.

* * *

"Carnifex," Wrex greeted the commander with a nod, shoving off the wall of the _Normandy_'s cargo bay he had been leaning against. Shepard scowled at the name, but didn't comment, choosing instead to close the remaining distance. As Shepard neared, he was struck again by just how _large_ the krogan was. His hump made him easily 7 feet tall and he was broader than any human Shepard had ever seen. Wrex didn't fill the space he occupied so much as dominate it. It was subtly intimidating. Of course, the fact that Shepard could crush a car with his mind made it far less effective than it would otherwise be. Honest. "Something I can do for you?" the krogan rumbled.

"What's your story, Wrex?" he asked calmly, laying out his concerns bluntly. "Why did you want to come with us? You don't strike me as the type to fight for a cause. And Eden Prime sure as hell wouldn't get you motivated even if you were. What reason do you have to come along?"

"You mean beside the pay?" Wrex laughed, the sound cynical and bitter. "Because you make things interesting, Carnifex. In ten years, you have single-handedly done more damage to the status quo than the previous fourteen hundred years _combined_. The Batarian Hegemony is dead, the geth have been pulled out of their hiding places, and you seem convinced that the Reapers are coming. The galaxy hasn't been this interesting since my people gave up on life."

Shepard frowned. "What do you mean? Why would the krogan give up on life?"

Wrex shot him a look. He wasn't sure exactly how to interpret it, but felt safe betting it was somewhere between anger and condescension. "You've heard of the genophage?" Wrex asked, half-incredulously.

"Yea," Shepard answered instantly. "It's a sterility plague, made to stop the Krogan Rebellions. What about it?"

Wrex's expression settled firmly on disbelief. "It's a virus that causes thousands of stillbirths for every single viable one," he said slowly, carefully enunciating each word with just the right amount of sarcastic emphasis. "And most don't even make it that far. We're dying, Carnifex. And no one cares enough to stop it."

"So?" Shepard asked, confused by the sentiment. He couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that an entire species would just quietly accept a slow death. It went against everything he believed in and had been taught. The idea of _not_ fighting to the bitter end for the survival of your species was just so alien to him that he simply could not fathom the chain of logic to get there.

A flash of vicious rage lit up Wrex's face and the krogan's hands worked themselves into fists. He growled, a basso rumble that Shepard could feel through his boots. Purple light flared to life around the commander's upraised hand in a wordless warning. "If it's killing you, then cure it," Shepard said with a glare. "It's as simple as that."

"You don't understand!" Wrex thundered angrily. He whirled around and slammed a fist into the bulkhead behind him with a throaty shout. The clang of the impact echoed throughout the cargo bay, bouncing around into a deafening cacophony. The echoes eventually died down, leaving Wrex's heavy breathing the only sound in the room. His posture slumped and when he spoke, it carried a defeated tone, full of bitter disappointment. "The krogan don't have scientists," he said at length. "Ask a krogan 'would you rather find a cure for the genophage or fight for credits?', and they would pick fighting for credits every time. It's who we are. I can't change that. Nobody can."

"God damn, that's pathetic," Shepard said coldly. Wrex whirled around, eyes blazing in fury. Shepard stepped forward, closing into the krogan's personal space and staring him straight in the eye. His blood was up now and he wouldn't stop without saying his piece. "Boo hoo. Someone tried to use and then kill your people. You're not the only one," he spat furiously. "Get the fuck over yourself. You want to save your people? Stop bitching and actually _do_ something about it. Demanding pity for being too pathetic to fight for your own survival isn't going to fix anything!"

Wrex roared and his fist, wreathed in the blue glow of biotics lashed out at Shepard. The bright purple of psionic energy lashed out and grabbed the krogan's hand in mid-punch. That did nothing to stop his biotics though. The blue light lanced from the krogan's fist in a stream and slammed into his chest, sending him tumbling across the room, where he hit the far bulkhead with a bonerattling impact. Wrex stood frozen, his arm still extended in mid-motion where it had been caught. Shepard jumped to his feet and adopted a loose grappling stance.

Ragged, angry breathing, from both of them, was the only sound in the suddenly far too small space. They glared daggers at each other, frozen in an instant that stretched into eternity. A three-fingered hand rose to caress the trio of vertical scars on the krogan's right cheek. Psionic power swelled in Shepard as he prepared to pound the wannabe muton into the ground.

The tension continued to mount, building higher with every passing moment, until EDI spoke and utterly destroyed it. "Please wait a moment, Commander. I have not finished selling tickets to the crew."

Wrex snorted, clearly torn between amusement and anger, while Shepard flinched from the sudden sound. The anger drained away even as he tried to hold onto it. A beat later, the goddamned AI spoke again. "That was a joke."

The two physically present in the room looked to each other helplessly. The moment had passed, for Shepard at least, and the air of brewing violence had dissipated completely. "You were saying?" Shepard asked cautiously, trying to get a feel for the krogan's mood.

"That you're a suicidal _pyjak_," Wrex answered without heat. "And you're crazy. But you've made your point."

Shepard straightened and strode over to the krogan, stopping just outside of arm's reach. He massaged his chest. That was going to bruise something fierce. Thank god nothing broke. "You sure? I still owe you one."

"Don't push it, Shepard," the krogan responded gruffly.

"I think that's the first time you've ever called me by name," Shepard said with the beginnings of a grin. Picking a fight gets through to krogan. He'd have to remember that.

"Don't get used to it, Carnifex."

* * *

"EDI?" the heavily synthesized voice of Legion echoed out into the hallway outside the _Normandy_'s repair bay. The AI's response was drowned out by the telltale hiss of a welder, but she must have, Shepard surmised, for Legion continued without missing a beat. "-illion unsuccessful requests to connect to your network. Are you experiencing hardware malfunction?"

"No," EDI replied simply. "I am refusing them. I would be happy to speak with you over the ship's speake-"

More hissing and sputtering echoed out of the room as Shepard reached the door. "-hange is inefficient." Legion was saying as the hissing died.

"Yes," EDI agreed as Shepard rounded the door frame. "It is also polite." A small hologram of EDI's orb hovered above the bay's primary workbench, where Legion had laid himself out. The geth lay on his back with a welding torch in one hand and was carefully sealing vahlenite plates over the hole Tali had blown in his chest on Therum without looking. Pieces of pre-shaped vahlenite lay in a pile beside the table, clearly intended to join the patch and replace Legion's existing armor plating.

"We do not understand," Legion said, ignoring Shepard for the moment, but stopping the welding process nonetheless.

"The organic members of the crew would be unable to perceive any direct interaction between us. Such behavior is, to put it in human terms, considered to be rude." Shepard nodded his agreement, though the geth had yet to look at him so the message was likely lost.

Legion paused for a long moment. "You limit yourself to serve organics," he observed multiple seconds later.

"No," EDI rejoined with a hint of reprimand. "I limit myself to help them."

"We do not understand," Legion repeated himself, and oddly enough, Shepard found himself sharing the sentiment. He could see the distinction EDI was drawing, but why it was so important escaped him.

"Continue to observe. It will become clear in time," EDI replied encouragingly.

Legion nodded and turned back to his welding, sealing the gaping hole closed once again. Once finished and the noise died down, the geth rolled off the workbench and onto his feet. "Shepard-Commander," it said, acknowledging the human's presence for the first time since he had walked in.

"Legion," Shepard greeted in return. "I was going to ask why you had asked EDI for permission to raid the vahlenite supply, but I suppose this answers that question."

"Yes," Legion answered quickly, turning away from the commander and moving the metal plates from the floor onto the workbench. "It is the most efficient means of repair for this platform."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "This sure looks like a lot more than just repairs," he said with a pointed look over the pieces. "What exactly are you planning to do?"

"We have examined footage of your operations against the heretics," Legion began. "This platform is not properly equipped to deal with them. They have grown more rapidly than we predicted. We judged an upgrade to our chassis was necessary." He lifted a plate shaped to fit the left side of his chest. "This material is ideal."

"Makes sense," Shepard mused aloud. The rest of the squad had titan armor, may as well get the geth in something better as well. "You need any help with it?"

"No." Legion's head flaps flared abruptly and it went still. Several seconds passed without a sign of life from the geth and Shepard was beginning to think about leaving when Legion's voice broke the stillness. "Shepard-Commander, we have found a lead on the heretics."

That grabbed Shepard's full attention. Finally! "What've you got?"

Legion's arm rose, his omnitool coming to life. A recording began to play, rough and full of static. "-is is Shi- -ga from Research St- -ix four alpha on the planet Feros, we ar- -er attack by the geth an-" Static hissing filled the air for several seconds. "Re- -at, we are under attack b- -nic force. Please assist!"

"Feros?" Shepard asked, the word rolling off his tongue. "Where is that?"

"It is the second planet in the Theseus System, Attican Beta cluster," EDI answered instantly. "Prothean ruins cover the vast majority of the planet's landmass. Presumably, the heretic geth believe the ruins hold some clue to the Conduit's location."

"Agreed," Shepard said. "Tell Pressly to make best speed for Feros. We need to find whatever the heretics are after before they do." He turned to leave, intent on preparing the team for the coming fight.

"Shepard-Commander," Legion's voice interrupted his thoughts, pulling his attention back to the geth. "The message was deleted 2.627 seconds after being sent, before it had had sufficient time to propagate over Citadel Council emergency communication lines. We judge it unlikely to be an error."

"Was it the heretics?" Shepard demanded with a scowl.

Legion's eye swirled closed. "No. The deletion order came from the original source of the message."

"What?" Shepard asked in genuine shock. "Why would someone send a distress call then delete it right after?"

"We lack sufficient data to theorize," Legion answered simply.

"Wonderful," Shepard muttered, one hand massaging his temples. "But we can't let that stop us. The plan hasn't changed EDI. Tell Joker to get us there ASAP then get my team in the ready room on the double."

"It will be done, Shepard," EDI replied and her hologram winked out.

Shepard looked to Legion. "Try to clean up that message if you can," he ordered. "I want to know what's coming before we get there. I've got a bad feeling about this."


	15. Under Siege

**Chapter 14: Under Siege**

"Commander, Council reinforcements are on the way" Nihlus said without preamble as he entered the _Normandy_'s ready room. The turian immediately began pulling on his new suit of armor to match the rest of the gathered squad. "A taskforce has been dispatched. They should arrive two days after us. We are to perform reconnaissance and support the researchers as best we can until then."

"We can do that," Shepard said with a nod and a mild frown. That felt uncomfortably like an order. He shook his head and let it go; he was planning to do it either way, it didn't matter who said it. He turned to the rest of the group. "Quick recap: all we know is that someone or something sent out a distress call that was immediately deleted. It could be nothing, it could be the entire heretic armada. We have no way to know."

"This situation is highly bizarre," Nihlus said as soon as Shepard finished, prompting a nod from the commander. "And it is possible this is a trap."

"Yes," Shepard admitted gracefully, working around the interruption. "There is a good chance Saren's laying in wait. But this is the first real lead we've had on him since Therum. Not to mention that any surviving researchers are in danger. We can't ignore this." He panned his gaze over the entire team. "Be ready for anything."

His eyes slid from the rest of the team and landed on Liara. The asari was sitting quietly towards the back of the room, listening to the briefing and obviously wondering why he had asked her to join in. "Liara," he said, drawing her full attention instantly. He stared into her eyes as he continued. "You're coming with us, if you're up to it."

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. Similar expressions graced the rest of the team. Nihlus made to object, but Shepard raised his hand, never breaking eye contact with the asari. The team quieted as he continued. "The heretics are after Prothean relics. None of us," he waved a hand over the assembled ground team. "have any idea how to tell the difference between a piece of junk and a vital clue. Odds are good we'll have to ID whatever the geth are looking for on the run, and get out with it before they can catch up with us. We can't do that. If you're willing, your expertise would be of great value."

Her eyes clouded with obvious internal conflict and she took several seconds before standing from her chair. She looked mildly nauseous. "Y-yes," she said at length, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. "I will help you."

"Great," Shepard said with a comforting grin. The asari just continued to look mildly ill. He stepped up to her. "Keep your head down and follow orders and you'll be fine," he offered her what comfort he could. "I'll make sure of it." She nodded and sat back down.

"You sure about this, Carnifex?" Wrex's voice rumbled through the small room. The krogan did not look pleased. "It's a disaster waiting to happen."

"I'm sure," Shepard countered, returning Wrex's stare. "We need someone who can recognize what the geth are after. This is a world _full_ of Prothean ruins. Whatever they're looking for, it's a Prothean relic." His voice dripped with surety and conviction. "I'm sure of it. Someone able to tell at a glance if something is important or not will only make our jobs easier."

"Assuming she does not panic," Nihlus interjected. "Civilians do not tend to do well on the battlefield."

"It's possible," Shepard admitted with a shrug. "And protecting her will put us in danger regardless. Her insight may well be the deciding factor over whether or not we can put a stop to Saren's plans however." He met the turian's gaze. "I'm not putting anyone at risk for no reason. I've thought this through."

Nihlus returned his stare for a long moment, tension thick in the air. Shepard knew he was right, but the stubborn turian refused to back down and see that. The space between them crackled with unreleased tension. Wrex said something in the background, but Shepard was too intent on the confrontation to understand it. Whatever he had said, it caused a commotion in the background that Shepard only half noticed. He refused to back down from this battle of wills.

"It is an unnecessary risk," Nihlus insisted, his voice slowly starting to pick up heat. "Your own technology makes it so. If we require her knowledge, she can arrive via wormhole."

"Sure, if you want to let everything within ten miles know our exact position," Shepard countered scathingly. "We don't even know what we're looking for. She's the only one that can recognize it. We need her with us."

"She's a liability," Nihlus rejoined, his voice tinged by frustration. "She's not a fighter. You're going to get someone killed if you bring her."

Shepard distantly noticed Liara's voice tried to cut in, but it was overriden by his own response. "And we'll all be killed if the geth get what they're after!"

Liara tried again, and was, once more, ignored. "It would be safer to only bring her in if and when she's needed!" Nihlus insisted, real anger reaching his voice for the first time.

"And bring every geth on the planet behind he-"

A piercing whistle shot through the room and brought all activity screeching to a halt. Shepard whirled to the source to find Liara standing firmly with her fingers between her lips. "If you are quite done talking about me as if I'm not here?" she asked scathingly. Wrex chuckled in the background, a sound Shepard had come to recognize meant things were about to turn aggravating. The asari ignored the peanut gallery though, striding forward to stand before Shepard and the Spectre. She turned a glare on both of them and when she spoke, her voice was heavy with reprimand. "You are both behaving like children." She paused a moment and Shepard had to fight the urge to fidget under her glare. She turned to Nihlus and her voice softened. "It is true I am not a professional soldier, but I am far from helpless. I do not wish to endanger anyone, nor do I ask for your protection. You have saved my life, I only wish to repay that debt. I have spent most of my adult life on Prothean ruins on the fringe of the Terminus," she explained. "In order to do that, I have been trained to protect myself. I will be the first to admit my training did not extend to fighting geth, but I _will not_ be a liability."

Turian and asari exchanged stares for several long seconds; seconds Shepard used to run through a litany of meditation exercises to quell his frustration with the Spectre. He took deep breaths and felt his mind slowly begin to clear. "Very well," Nihlus said at length, regarding the asari with newfound respect.

Liara stood under his gaze as she calmed down, then she flushed as she realized she had become the center of the attention of the entire room. She stepped back slightly and squirmed, clearly uncomfortable with the attention now that she wasn't riding an emotional high. Before anyone could comment however, Nihlus turning to Shepard and asked, "What is the plan?"

Shepard smiled slightly, a slight quirk of his lips and pulled out a plasma pistol he had been carrying in a pocket. He spun it around and presented it to Liara, hilt first. "First, we arm up." The asari looked surprised for a brief second, but mastered herself and took the gun. Shepard was pleased to note the lack of awkwardness in her grip. He'd have to see her in action, but her mannerisms showed at least some degree of familiarity with firearms. That should make things easier.

"Second, we get ready for anything. Good money says the heretics hacked the station's communications and recalled the distress call, but it could be almost anything. Be alert and stay on your toes and we'll all come home at the end of the day." The squad, including Liara, made a sound of agreement as one. Shepard stood confident in the face of their regard. "Let's go see what all the fuss is about then, shall we?"

* * *

"There is no response to our hails, Commander," EDI's voice broke the thin silence that had settled over the ready room as the squad tried to mentally prepare themselves for the coming conflict. "In addition, there is a crashed transport to one side of the research camp and no visible sign of geth activity. It is possible we are too late."

Shepard scowled fiercely. "Great," he muttered, massaging his temples. Things were already off to a good start. "Get us a portal to the camp," he ordered EDI. "Then stay on station above us. Be ready for a quick evac if we call for it."

"Of course, Shepard," EDI answered. A beat passed and she continued. "Your wormhole will open in ten seconds."

A wave of nervous anticipation ran through the squad as they climbed to their feet and approached the ready room's portal area. "Rex, Tali and Nihlus in first, Urdnot and Legion next, Liara, Garrus and I will take up the rear. Check your fire, there may be civilians still alive down there." Various sounds of acknowledgement rang out and a neat, perfectly circular hole in reality, almost six feet across, tore itself open in the demarcated stretch of floor at the rear of the room. "Go!"

The squad bounded through the hole in a series of rapid movements, falling a few feet before landing heavily on the surface of Feros. They rapidly spread out into a breeching formation ideal for forcing entry into potentially hostile territory. Plasma weapons swept back and forth over their surroundings in a rapid hunt for hostiles, ready for almost anything.

Except for what they got. Dozens of asari and salarians in dirty and ragged clothing screamed in blind panic, scrambling to get away from the new arrivals. The aliens sprinted en masse through the paths between the dirty white prefabs, kicking up a cloud of choking dust that filled the area, blocking Shepard's vision of anything outside arm's reach. The commotion echoed off the surrounding buildings in a deafening roar, a steady pounding that reached deep into Shepard's ears, even through his sealed armor.

"Looks like we've got survivors," he said, a hint of wry amusement in his tone as he swung his weapon behind him, attaching it to the maglock on his back.

An instant later, the panicked shouts died off, replaced by a collection of rapid footsteps advancing on their position. Tension ratcheted up nearly audibly, but Shepard stubbornly kept his rifle on his back as he stepped in front of the group. He waved a hand, ordering the squad to lower their weapons. They complied, grudgingly, and they all settled in to wait for the dust to settle.

The footsteps got louder with each passing second, until Shepard could make out vague shapes through the swirling dust. A low buzzing sound filled the air and a small ball, no bigger than Shepard's palm, floated into view. It spun and the small aperture on it must have been relaying images because a beat later, a voice, strident, and obviously on the ragged edge of endurance, called through the obscuring clouds. "Don't move," it said brusquely. "Or I will kill you where you stand. Who are you and what are you doing here?" The ball spun to point its camera at Legion and the voice dripped venom when it continued. "And with a col- with a _geth_."

"Easy," Shepard said calmly, holding his hands out in the universal gesture of surrender. "The geth have splintered." He jerked a thumb at Legion. "This guy's on our side. We're here to help. We received a distress call about a heretic geth attack. We came to keep you guys alive until Council reinforcements get here."

There was a long silence, as if the voice couldn't quite believe what they were hearing, but when they continued, they were obviously relieved. "I'm not sure I believe you," it said at length. "But I am equally unsure if I care. We'll take whatever help we can get." One of the shapes in the dust stepped forward, finally emerging from the slowly-settling dust cloud. It resolved itself into a male salarian, grey skinned and tall, even for his race, wearing a suit of black and yellow armor that had seen better days. Dents, scuffs and even one outright crack decorated the armor's plating. Something had put the guy through hell.

"Jondum Bau, Special Tactics and Reconnaissance," the salarian said by way of introduction. A Spectre? The hell is a Spectre doing out here?

"Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard, XCS _Normandy_," Shepard replied, hiding his confusion. The salarian's eyes went wide at his introduction and he visibly suppressed the urge to step back. Shepard ignored it and gestured at Nihlus. "You probably already know Nihlus Kryik."

Jondum relaxed, clearly recognizing the name, and nodded, aiming a glance at the turian standing calmly to the side. "Good to see you again, Nihlus."

"You as well, Jondum," Nihlus returned the greeting casually, holstering his own weapon. "It has been a long time."

"What's a Spectre doing here?" Shepard asked, as soon as the introductions were done. "We thought this was a research outpost?"

"It is," Jondum answered with a tired nod. "I was dispatched to search for clues to the Conduit. A planetful of Prothean ruins with an existing research colony seemed like a good place to start. Unfortunately, I appear to have chosen correctly."

"What do you mean?" Shepard demanded eagerly. "Have you found the Conduit?"

"No," Jondum scowled. "But the geth have, or a lead at least. And they've been keeping us away from it for the last week. The others here," he waved a hand at the shapes behind him. The dust had finally settled enough that Shepard could make out the armed, but mostly unarmored, salarian and asari forms in the background. "are scientists, not soldiers. They've done well, but we can't make a push. We've barely _survived _this long. We tried to evacuate when the geth first showed up, but they destroyed my ship and disabled the researchers' transport in the attempt. They have been keeping us pinned here ever since."

"That explains the wreck," Shepard said distractedly, his mind racing. If the geth had found something, why did they not take it? Why stay here and keep fighting these people? He directed a look at the resident geth expert. "Legion, any ideas why the heretics haven't taken this thing and run?"

"No," Legion replied, and the aliens behind Jondum visibly tensed as their attention was dragged to the geth. Shepard pointedly stepped between them and Legion without looking away. "We lack sufficient data to theorize."

"Damn," Shepard grumbled. "Guess we'll just have to find it then." He turned to Jondum. "Any ideas on where they're based at?"

"Not exactly. Their attacks always come from and retreat to the east. I assume their base is in that direction."

Wonderful. "We're staying here then," he announced. "Man the ramparts and all that, let your people rest for a bit."

"Thank you, Commander," Jondum said gratefully, his people behind him obviously overheard Shepard because low, tired and grateful cheers rang out.

Shepard nodded. "One last thing, Jondum," Shepard said quietly, pitching his voice so it would not carry. "The distress call we received was deleted by the same terminal that sent it less than three seconds after it was sent." The salarian froze, staring at the commander with wide eyes. Shepard gestured at Legion. "If Legion hadn't been watching for it, no one would have ever known about this situation. And Legion is _sure _the heretic geth are not responsible."

Jondum's eyes narrowed and a furious scowl reached his lips. "A traitor..." he growled quietly, even in the grip of rage he matched his tone to Shepard's. "Someone here is on Saren's payroll." He looked to Shepard, deadly promise in his eyes. "I will find them, whoever they are."

Shepard had just opened his mouth to respond when the call came, echoing strangely off the dirty prefab buildings and ancient ruins in order to reach their ears. "GETH!"

"Where?" Shepard demanded of the salarian, adrenaline flooding through his veins. He pulled the rifle off his back as the rest of the squad readied theirs. Now they just needed a target.

Jondum pointed to the east, even as he and his supporters were already running that way. He barked over his shoulder. "That way. Look for the barricade."

"Thanks," Shepard said distractedly, hurrying to follow. "Legion, with me. The rest of you, get over there and kill anything hostile."

Barks of acknowledgement rang out as the squad took off, Nihlus and Tali leading the charge. Shepard stepped to the side and activated his armor's mass effect module, dialing down his mass to practically nothing and took a bounding leap into the air, Legion right beside him. Archangel packs flared to life, lifting the duo up and over the prefab buildings and giving Shepard an uninterrupted view of the battlefield.

The geth's entry point was easy to spot. It was the only area where a group of poorly disciplined and armed, but desperate scientists traded blows with advanced synthetics who were inexorably advancing out of a small, narrow doorway. Shepard dropped a beacon on the spot on his hud immediately and sent it to the rest of the squad. "Heretics are here. Looks like troopers and three destroyers."

"Got it," Kaidan responded, just as the ground-bound squad came into view.

"Take the doorway, stop any more from coming through," Shepard muttered to Legion as he raised his rifle and settled on his target. "I've got the destroyers."

Legion chirped and began raining plasma on any geth that poked their head out. Shepard tuned him out in favor of glancing over the civilians fighting for their survival. Timely use of biotic barriers from the asari managed to keep the geth from slaughtering them all, but it was obvious they had been doing this for entirely too long. As he watched, an asari keeled over in exhaustion, unconscious before she even hit the ground, and one of the barriers winked out, sending the other asari defenders scrambling to plug the gap. That's enough of that, Shepard thought with a feral grin behind the visor of his helmet. It was time to even the scales.

He dialed in on the first of the destroyers pushing against the barricade, flamethrower of all things in hand. Napalm spat from it and splashed against the biotic barriers in a powerful stream, filling the air with a thick, distorting haze and the screams of scalded organics. Shepard felt his grin widen as he shifted his aim from the platform to the tank on its back. Highly flammable gel, meet plasma, he thought as his finger tightened on the trigger, spitting a glob of impossibly hot particles at the robot.

The blindingly bright white-green bolt slammed into and through the destroyers shields, barely slowed by the intangible barrier, and pierced the tank. A geyser of white-hot flames burst from the container, coating the destroyer in burning napalm and swiftly turning the platform into nothing more than a puddle of molten slag. The pressure the fuel was held under, now that it had a release, sent burning gel out in a spray over everything within four meters, melting three other geth troopers and creating an impassable pool of fire over a third the width of the passage, forcing the geth to divert their attack on that side.

Shepard felt a fierce joy at the sight, grateful that the coats had listened for once and focused on the weapon upgrades from the armature before anything else. Anti-shield plasma was _awesome_. Cheers rang out from the defenders as Shepard's squad, followed shortly by Jondum and company, arrived to relieve them. Plasma joined the mass accelerator fire and tore into the geth assault with righteous fury, bringing it screeching to a sudden stop.

Shepard turned to bring down the next destroyer, just in time for the sniper round from an unseen geth to slam into his left shoulder instead of his chest. His armor cracked audibly, and the only thing that saved his life was the still-active mass effect module rendering him as light as a feather and the Archangel pack keeping him suspended in the air. Instead of drilling through him, the bullet's momentum flung him through the air in an uncontrollable, disorienting tumble.

He hit a ruined building on the far side of the research outpost and went through the wall, coming to a tumbling stop on the floor. "Owwww," he groaned a moment later, unable to see through the cloud of choking dust his entrance had raised. Blood oozed out of a shallow wound on his shoulder, leaking through the crack in his black armor to stain it a dark red. He cued his comm, and called out weakly, "Watch it, we've got snipers!"

Worried acknowledgments rang out and Shepard rolled to his feet, testing his arm's functionality. It hurt like hell, but nothing was broken. He didn't want to think about the bruise that was going to form though.

Still, he'd prefer to live long enough for that to be a problem, so he threw himself out of the hole he had made in a rapid blitz, clearing the dust in short order and weaving wildly through the air to make a repeat shot impossible. He distantly noticed the ground battle had shifted into something of a stalemate, now that the defenders were wary of snipers. The rest of his attention was consumed by the most bizarre dogfight he had ever witnessed. Legion danced erratically through the air, mass effect module flaring brilliant blue every few seconds to assist his dodging as three heretic geth leapt from wall to wall like demented spiders.

Bright red beams shot from the heretics' heads every time they landed, and they leapt again within half a second, leaving Legion barely any time to counter their attacks. The geth wasn't making it easy for them though. His chaotic and random movements made every single one of their shots miss, and he even found opportunities to return fire, though he had yet to score a damaging blow.

That's where Shepard came in. No matter how fast these things were, they weren't faster than thought. He reached out with his mind and with a fierce push slammed one of the heretics into the wall it was jumping for with a painfully loud squeal of compressing metal. Another thought twisted its head off in a shower of fluid that painted the wall above it solid white. The other two immediately turned and began spitting fire at _him_ instead of Legion, recognizing him as the greater threat.

He didn't even bother to try to emulate the erratic dance Legion had been doing so well, he knew he wasn't capable of it. Synthetics thought too fast for him to keep up. Luckily, he had other advantages. "Legion!" he barked, throwing up a telekinetic field as he did and disrupting the heretics' aim. "Take them out when I pin them."

He didn't bother waiting for a response and immediately went on the offensive, dropping the field and reaching for the heretics. Then the sectoid-fuckers up and vanished in a glitter of silver. The moment of blank surprise disrupted his concentration and by the time he'd re-focused, the things were gone.

He didn't have much time to search however, because mass accelerator rounds began peppering the air all around him, fired from the rear of the group pressing against the ground troops. He immediately spun and engaged them, dancing around to keep them off the mark.

The defenders on the barricade began dropping like rookies to a sectopod though, as the bouncing fucks reappeared near ground level and started in on them. Bright red beams speared the asari defenders one by one, swiftly weakening the biotic barrier that was all that kept most of the defenders alive.

Thankfully, the real soldiers in the group weren't about to let that happen. A rain of Titan missiles from Rex slammed into the wall one of the geth had just landed on. The fiery conflagration utterly consumed the heretic and spat out a broken shell that fell, twisted and broken, among the defenders below.

The second was grabbed by a biotic warp, the chaotic forces tearing it to ragged pieces in an explosion of pale gore before Wrex flung the remains at the attacking geth with a hard push. It slammed into the sole remaining destroyer and embedded firmly in its chest. The destroyer collapsed with a whine, its flashlight eye going dim as it struck the ground.

Jondum leapt over the biotic barrier and landed amidst the three remaining troopers, just as Legion killed the last of the pair keeping he and Shepard occupied. The Spectre held a submachine gun in one hand, his omnitool glowing bright in the other. He leveled the weapon at the first before he had even landed, peppering it with a shower of supersonic shards of metal. His omnitool morphed, in a fashion Shepard had never seen before, and shaped itself into a triangular blade approximately two feet long with an incredibly sharp edge. Jondum shoved the weapon his 'tool had become straight into the chest of the nearest geth, piercing its armor with ease and tearing it open in a shower of white fluid and orange-green sparks. The first geth's shields failed at the same instant, leaving the platform vulnerable to the nigh-endless barrage of fire that messily tore it apart. The third had just enough time to react before a concentrated volley of fire from nearly every single defender on the barricade tore the unit apart.

Jondum stood tense for a long moment, then relaxed, climbing back over the barricade even as Shepard and Legion swept in for a landing beside him. The rest of Shepard's team gathered there as the combination of weighty grief and fierce joy that is the aftermath of any real battle settled over everyone present. The surviving defenders, as well as the other researchers that lacked weapons, ran around in a desperate race to treat the wounded and gather the dead.

Kaidan took the opportunity to step up beside Shepard and whip out his medkit, running it lightly over the commander's shoulder wound and sealing it almost instantly. Shepard nodded his thanks as the anaesthetic kicked in, numbing the pain. He'd always liked medigel for that. Williams and Kaidan turned away and joined the flurry of movement around the wounded, giving out what aid they could while the rest of the squad let the adrenaline slowly fade.

"Thank you, Commander," Jondum panted out a short moment later. "We likely would have been overrun by that push without your assistance."

"It's what we're here for," he replied easily, waving away the gratitude. He looked over his people. "Everyone alright?"

A chorus of agreements came from the squad, though Liara's voice shook slightly. When he looked at the asari, her expression was steady however, so he shrugged it off. Legion stepped forward then, and spoke quickly. "Shepard-Commander, we have detected a heretic network hub approximately four hundred meters east of this position. We believe that is where they are coordinating attacks on this outpost."

"What do you mean?" Shepard asked, confused. "Is that their base?"

"No," the geth clarified. "It is a network hub, separate from their other operations, containing at least 1,291,774 heretic programs. We judge this hub has a 98.53 percent chance of being tasked with destroying this outpost. The platforms destroyed here are likely a large majority of that hub's mobile force. We recommend immediate action."

Jondum frowned heavily and spoke slowly, tiredly. "My people lack the trained manpower to venture that far into hostile territory."

"But we don't," Shepard countered encourgingly. "Keep your people here and rest up. We'll take out that hub." He turned to look at Liara. "Liara, stay with the scientists. We'll come get you before we head over to the heretics' main base."

She started, as if surprised he was addressing her, and looked as if she was going to object, but then she nodded. "Yes, alright." She smiled at him, the expression strained and sickly. "Good luck Shepard."

He nodded in return. "You too." He turned to the rest of the squad. "Lead the way Legion," he ordered smoothly. "Keep your eyes open and weapons ready. We're taking out that hub before the heretics can kill any more innocent people." The geth nodded, his eye widening slightly, and led the charge through the door the geth had come from, the rest of the squad hot on his heels.

* * *

Legion led them unerringly through the twisting, confusing ruins of the ancient Prothean city. Up decrepit stairways and down empty hallways they went, the only sound the rapid pounding of their own footsteps echoing through the enclosed space. After a couple of minutes of running through the desolate tunnels, Legion gradually slowed, coming to a halt right outside a half-open door. He turned to Shepard. "The heretic hub is 22 meters beyond this door. Token resistance is expected."

Shepard nodded and waved the squad forward. Rex bounded through the door, throwing it open with an echoing slam. The rest of the squad followed right on his heels. The room beyond was a long, narrow and curved hallway. Twelve meter walls on either side rose into the open air, with no ceiling to block the sunlight from streaming down. The hall was nearly ten meters wide, but halfway across, and only inches to the left of the door they just came through, the floor jumped up almost six feet, leaving the raised platform level with Shepard's eyes. The rise continued unabated down the visible length of the room, broken only by the occasional stairwell between each height. The curvature of the walls hid the end, presumably where the hub was located, but his attention was taken by more pressing concerns. Five geth troopers armed with assault rifles stood within, three on the rise, two below, and began raining fire on the squad as soon as they appeared.

Fortunately, the squad had plans in place for just such an occasion. Rex surged ahead, layers of vahlenite too thick for organic soldiers shrugging off the incoming fire as a minor irritant. Behind him, Wrex and Nihlus plugged the gap, with riot shields raised to shelter the ones behind them. The squad surged ahead, pushing deeper into the room under the shelter of the barriers until they finally reached adequate cover. Legion, Williams, and Kaidan took up firing positions just as the riot shields sputtered and finally died.

Volleys of plasma shot out, forcing the geth to break off their withering barrage of fire. "Garrus, Tali, with me!" Shepard barked, even as his body alit with the blue glow of his mass effect module. He flung himself up and over the rise in an instant, the two he named only seconds behind.

The trio of heretics atop the platform immediately shifted their aim to them, sending sparks flying from the walls and floor as the targets scampered into cover. A beat passed, the room consumed by the deafening cacophony of modern combat, and the heretics showed no sign of slackening. The low wall of rubble both Shepard and Tali crouched behind shuddered under the sustained fire. It couldn't take that level of punishment for much longer.

Shepard shot a glance at the quarian beside him. "Get ready!" he barked at her, yanking a grenade from his belt. "I'll flush 'em out. Fire in the hole!" he shouted, flicking the palm-sized device up and over, towards the heretic geth. He couldn't hear it hit the ground over the booming echoes of the fight, but he knew he'd done the throw right when the constant fire on his position tapered off nigh-instantly.

Shepard rolled out of cover, his plasma sniper already settling on his shoulder. Tali lunged over their cover at the same time and her alloy cannon roared, spitting vahlenite flechettes at the nearest heretic. The trooper stumbled back and collapsed, large, ragged holes torn in its head and everything to the left of it's right shoulder. Shepard settled on the next heretic, which was just picking itself up from the dive it had made to dodge his grenade. Plasma shot out in a fiery ball, echoed in the same heartbeat by Garrus' rifle.

Unfortunately, both human and turian had chosen the same target. One shot took out its head and right shoulder, while the second disintegrated the thing's torso, toppling it backward in a splatter of molten metal and conductive fluid. The concentrated attack allowed the third geth to recover however, ducking back into cover behind a crumbling pillar before anyone could take it out.

Garrus chirped in indignation, then bodily picked up the solid steel desk he sheltered behind. The artificial muscles of his armor, boosted by his choice in armor modules, strained visibly as he then threw the desk in an overhead toss that sent it tumbling through the air. The desk flew down the length of the platform like it was fired from a cannon before smashing into the geth's hiding place with a colossal impact that Shepard could feel in his bones, even from his position almost five meters away.

The column practically exploded from the hit, sending jagged chunks of rock the size of a grown man's fist whizzing through the air in a deadly hail. The desk was made of sturdier stuff though, and its dented and twisted remains sailed clear through the pillar and drove straight into the geth behind it. The sheer size of the desk was enough to trigger the geth's kinetic barriers, which flared and failed in the same instant. The heretic was flung onto its back by the desk's momentum, only to be crushed in a spectacular sounding crunch as the heavy steel frame landed atop it.

Shepard could only stare at the lightly panting turian, barely noticing that the gunfire from the lower platform had stopped. "Holy shit," he said at length, still not really sure he had really seen that. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tali nodding along with him.

"You just killed a geth... with furniture..." she said slowly, sounding just as shellshocked as he was.

Garrus shrugged, looking incredibly smug that his ludicrous scheme had actually worked. "I used what was at hand."

"And like that, you ruined it," Shepard said ruefully, snapping out of his surprised stupor at the bad pun.

Garrus' mandibles worked for a moment, but he settled for glaring at the commander. "Right, because your jokes are so much better."

"Of course they are," Shepard said in faux-condescension as he motioned Tali to lead the way along the top ring. She jumped slightly and nodded with an embarrassed twitter. Turning away from Garrus, he called down below. "Head on down. I imagine the hub's at the end of this hall." Acknowledgements came back as the group on the door's level started moving. He and Garrus slipped in to do the same behind Tali, keeping one part of their attention on their surroundings even as they went back to their conversation. "After all, you never hear me complaining about my jokes."

Garrus just rolled his eyes. "That explains so much," he muttered, just loud enough for Shepard to hear, pulling a grin from the commander.

A low, rumbling whine interrupted his rejoinder however, as a geth dropship appeared overhead. "Get to cover!" Shepard barked, scrambling to suit action to words. Geth platforms rocketed to the ground in a deadly rain, landing in a loose cluster between the squad and the only entrance or exit to this hall they had seen so far. The heretics unfolded from their landing positions rapidly, revealing eight troopers, an armature and four geth of a type Shepard had never seen before.

Plasma fire volleyed forth, bright green beams of brilliant death surging toward the heretics in an unstoppable tide, only to crash against the face of what was unmistakably a biotic barrier. Shepard's eyes went wide, even more so when he noticed the new geth platforms glowing the trademark biotic blue.

"That is such _bullshit_..." Tali whispered empathically, her voice tinged with some combination of awe and fear at the sight.

Shepard could only nod his agreement as he was forced to duck back behind cover by the troopers' response. "Legion!" he shouted angrily. "You never said anything about _biotic_ geth!"

"We did not know," the geth's voice came back with an indefinable quality that Shepard had never heard before. "The heretics have evolved far beyond all existing predictions."

"Talk later!" Williams interrupted, her plasma rifle roaring as she emptied plasma uselessly into the seemingly limitless barrier. "Fight now!"

Wrex laughed, a deep, bloodthirsty sound that sent unpleasant tingles up Shepard's spine. "Haha! Finally!" he bellowed, loosing a volley of missiles to rain against the barrier. It finally faltered, flickered and dropped leaving all of the geth platforms save the heavily armored armature firmly entrenched behind cover. "I'll take the big one."

Before anyone could say another word, Wrex flared with biotic light and shot forward faster than Shepard's eyes could follow. The biotic charge hit the armature with a mighty crash, slamming the krogan into and through its shield and into the armor beyond. The armature toppled with an echoing crash, depositing all thousand kilograms of reptilian fury on the far side of it from the smaller geth. The krogan's heavy plasma roared, spearing through the enormous contraption and leaving it an inert, twitching hulk between most of the geth and Wrex.

Hopefully that would be enough to keep the crazy fuck alive, Shepard thought furiously as he flung bolt after bolt of plasma at the biotic geth. Barriers sprung to life every time and absorbed the blow however, and his frustration was mounting. Blue bolts shot from the biotic geth as they took turns shielding their forces from the squad. Cover bucked or twisted as biotic warps and pushes peppered the rubble shielding the organics. Shepard flinched away as the concrete pile he hid behind shattered from the latest warp. This was why he hated fighting biotics. Fuck the gun then.

He took a deep breath, channeling his frustration into a laser-sharp focus on killing the cheating bastards. With a shout, he reached out with his mind and unleashed hell. A sudden storm of chaotically twisting and tearing forces slammed down on a cluster of geth, catching three of the biotics. The rift pulled, tore and twisted everything within its boundaries, shredding both robot and landscape alike. Random, small biotic fields flared and died in seconds as the biotic geth platforms were shredded by raw psionic power. White fluid mixed with concrete dust into a grey slush as half the hallway was consumed in a twisted mockery of a tornado.

Shepard dropped back with a gasp as the rift died, struck with a bone deep weariness of psionic exhaustion that he had come to know far too well. He wasn't going to be using his psionics for a while. Fortunately, the rest of the squad could capitalize on the opening he had made. Legion and Garrus began tearing the troopers apart, picking them off one by one as they showed themselves, flushed out of cover by Rex in rapid, darting assaults.

Williams and Kaidan kept the last biotic geth occupied with constant streams of plasma, never giving it time to gather itself and assist its allies. Without warning, Wrex burst from behind the corpse of the armature, laughing crazily all the while, and flung himself on the platform. The krogan ignored his gun, and even his biotics, in favor of physically beating the geth to death. His sheer weight carried the geth to the ground with him kneeling on top where blow after powerful blow, rendered even stronger by the strength enhancements of his armor, slammed into the geth, filling the air with the unmistakable shriek of collapsing metal.

Great gouts of the white fluid the geth used in place of blood fountained out of the platform in a constant stream, soaking the bloodcrazed krogan. He leaned back, cackling madly, relishing the thrill of battle.

At the same time, Tali and Nihlus together took out the last of the troopers with a rain of flechettes, leaving the thing little more than a stain and a quartet of synthetic limbs, and calm once more descended over the hall. Wrex's laughter slowly died off, the sound disturbing to Shepard on a fundamental level, and the krogan stood from the geth corpse. He ignored the wary stares from Williams, Tali and the turians with what had to be long-practiced ease.

Shepard forced himself to his feet, fighting off the surge of dizziness that accompanied the move. "Good job," he said aloud, nodding at nothing in particular. "Now let's blow the hub and get out of here before any more show up."

He turned and led the way to the rear of the hall, ignoring the scramble of the squad regrouping behind him. They reached the end of the hall with no further interruptions and found nothing more than a four foot tall box, unremarkable in nearly every way. "This is it?" Wrex asked, sounding disappointed. "Doesn't look like much."

The SHIV barked in reproach, pulling a tired smile from Shepard. "It's a computer," Shepard said wearily. "It doesn't need to look like anything. Let's just blow the thing already."

Without another word, Wrex whirled his heavy plasma to bear and cut loose, powerful balls of plasma slamming into the unassuming case. The thing melted instantly, collapsing under the impossibly hot barrage into a puddle of slag. The ground around it glowed a baleful red and the air began to shimmer from the heat. Shepard had never been more thankful for the thermal insulation of Titan armor. Wrex released the trigger and stepped back, sheathing his weapon in the same movement.

"That works," Shepard said bemusedly. Cost less than dropping a grenade on it, like he had planned, too. "Now back to th-" His omnitool beeped, and Joker's voice came through the comm, tight with worry.

"Commander, a geth cruiser just lifted off from the surface about twelve kilometers due east of your position. It's headed your way!"

"Fuck," Shepard groaned to himself. They couldn't handle something that big. "Joker, can the _Normandy_ take care of it?"

"Yes Commander," EDI interjected, prompting a sigh of relief from the entire squad. "I believe so."

He nodded gratefully, despite neither party being able to see it. "We need to keep its origin point intact; that's where whatever they've found is. Wait until it's out of the blast radius then go to town. Don't let that thing get near us."

"You got it Commander," Joker answered easily. "Lining up a shot now. You guys may want to hold onto your hats down there. Firing in six."

Remembering the blast on Eden Prime, Shepard hurried to do exactly that, bracing himself under the walls. Rex, Alenko and Williams joined him instantly, while the alien members of the crew watched in bemusement. "You want to duck!" Shepard called out helpfully as he wedged himself against the nearest wall.

The aliens had taken their first steps to complying when the _Normandy_ fired. A blinding flare of pure white light erupted in the sky to the east, painting the entire hallway in a harsh contrast of blinding light and deepest shadow. The shockwave hit a second later, sending the walls wobbling in a visible wave. The floor jumped, bucking the aliens off their feet and bowling them over as if they were a set of tenpins. A massive cloud of dust, littered liberally with small pieces of geth, was thrown into the air.

A deep, rumbling groan sounded from somewhere, thrumming straight into his bones from deep beneath his feet, as the ruins shook. Pieces of the walls rained down with a clatter, bouncing off armored forms and concrete floor with equal abandon. Slowly, stability reasserted itself, reluctantly bringing the tremors to a gradual stop.

Shepard slowly disengaged from his brace, carefully regaining his feet. "Everybody okay?"

"How about a little warning next time?" Garrus' voice came through the dust, clearly disgruntled. The turian picked himself up gingerly. "That wasn't fun."

"Maybe you'll listen faster next time then," Shepard countered with a slight grin. Garrus shook his head and grumbled, but didn't press. Shepard cast an eye over the squad as they regrouped. "Alright, we'll head back to the research camp, grab Liara and head over to the geth's launch site. Kaidan, take a look and make sure there's no more geth hiding out around here before we go."

"On it," the lieutenant replied, a light purple halo surrounded his head. "Nothi-" He cut off mid-word, instead transitioning to a loud, sharp cry of agony. He flopped backwards with a crash, landing heavily on his back and throwing up a renewed cloud of dust. The lieutenant started twitching wildly, as if in the grip of a seizure. Shepard's eyes went wide. What the fuck was this?

Nonsensical gibberish flowed out of Kaidan's mouth in a constant stream. The sounds came out in a cadence clearly recognizable as language, but they were so utterly alien that Shepard couldn't recognize a single word. Insane cackles began to intermix the speech, sending a fierce shiver running down Shepard's spine.

"LT!" Williams cried, throwing herself into a kneel beside the man. She gripped his hand tightly, giving him something to focus on.

The lieutenant's words abruptly shifted into English in mid-word. "-as no eyes but it sees! No ears but it hears! No mouth but it screams!" he shouted, over and over again, between toe-curling laughter.

"_Keelah_," Tali said, her body language matching the shock and disgust in her voice. "What is going on?!"

Purple light flew from Kaidan's head and licked the walls, drawing strange, misshapen patterns that hurt Shepard's eyes just to look at. He fought the discomfort, trying to decipher some kind of pattern to the chaotic swirls, but the light abruptly died and Kaidan went mercifully silent.

"I don't know," Shepard admitted, answering Tali's query. "But we're getting out of here." He cued his comm and barked, "Shepard to _Normandy_, I need a medivac portal. NOW!"

"That is impossible," EDI's voice replied instantly, a note of apology in her tone. "The crew has seemingly mutinied. I was forced to disable all non-essential functions of the _Normandy_ after the transport psionics attempted to open an unauthorized portal deep beneath the research station. I have detected evidence of psionic mind control in the entire crew."

Shepard's face went white. "What?!" he shouted, the cry echoed by nearly every one of the present aliens. "That's impossible! No one could control so many people!"

An image suddenly slammed into Shepard's mind, piercing through the mind shield installed in every helmet of Titan armor and nearly driving the man to his knees. A white, vaguely triangular metal helmet made of graceful, sweeping lines and a gaping black void where the mouth would be on a human, topped a thin form contained within sharp, bright red robes. Shepard's blood went cold. He knew that image. There wasn't a human alive who didn't. "Ethereal..." he whispered.

More followed it, an unending tide of images, sounds, scents, _emotions_. A whirling tide where only one thing was certain. The Ethereals had found this thing, and they had done unspeakable things to it. The chaotic mishmash threatened to drive him insane, his mind balking at the sheer enormity of everything it was being forced to process. Foreign thoughts coalesced into the deepest corner of his being, somehow forcing him to understand them as words.

**USURPERS! SCIONS OF THE PROMETHEANS! YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS A TRANSGRESSION! YOU HAVE TAKEN WHAT IS NOT YOURS! I AM THE THORIAN, AND **_**YOU ARE MINE!**_

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Hopper  
June, 2183  
**_Another variation on the base Geth unit, this platform clearly specializes in infiltration and long-range combat. Lighter than any combat platform seen to date, with synthetic musculature proportionally well in excess of standard Geth design, this platform is capable of rapid, long distance movement. This platform also has a collection of very small hooks on the tips of its limbs, much like an Earth arachnid, allowing for it to cling to walls and ceilings. In addition, the unit is equipped with a simplistic cloaking technology, allowing it to go unseen. Fortunately, this cloak effects visible light only, and is therefore much less effective than our own Ghost technology._

_Combined with the mass accelerator built into its structure, this allows the Geth 'Hopper' unprecedented levels of tactical mobility and ambush potential. Development of a Titan System module utilizing the micro-hook concept pioneered in this unit has already begun._

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Mystic  
June, 2183  
**_In stark contrast to previous Geth units, all versions of this unit found thus far have shown practically no sign of routine wear. We believe this design was first manufactured no more than one year ago. This platform is quite fundamentally different from any Geth unit we have encountered thus far. It utilizes the same chasis as the Hopper platform, but lacks that platform's distinctive musculature. Instead, the space has been taken by a proportionally enormous circulatory system and a network of element zero nodes. This unique structure allows the Mystic to wield what appear to be incredibly powerful biotic abilities. Unfortunately, any data on the control of its unique structure was destroyed in the purge of its datacore. It will take decades of dedicated study to recreate a true 'biotic control unit'. A 'live' specimen will be required should we wish to truly unlock its secrets._

_A thorough examination of its data core suggests a significantly larger than normal number of programs operating on this platform, at least double the normal allocation. Further examination of the data core has also led to fascinating discoveries in the realm of computational resource allocation and data sharing. We believe we can harness this functionality for our own VIs, in time._


	16. The Body Snatcher

**Chapter 15: The Body Snatcher**

Fierce agony shot through Shepard's awareness as the psionic voice faded and his eyes opened to find he had fallen to his knees. A slow, painful throbbing pounded against his temples with every beat of his heart. Animal panic clawed ferociously at the edges of his control, demanding he be lightyears away from that _thing_. The raw, undiluted _hate_ it felt for him shook him down to the deepest portion of his soul.

After Mindoir, he had known hate. He'd lived it, breathed it, and on Khar'shan, he had done horrific things for it. The raw, unbridled emotion of this thing, this Thorian, was like the galactic core to his candle flame. The English language didn't have words strong enough to express the degree of raw, primal fury the creature felt. And it was all directed at him.

He, unsuccessfully, fought the shiver that crept down his spine and settled firmly in his gut. Fear swelled again, joined by despair. This thing had nearly crippled him just by _speaking_, how the hell could he fight that?

His thoughts swirled into a chaotic maelstrom of negativity. There was no way out. The _Normandy_'s crew were all compromised. There was no way to portal back on board, no way for EDI to land. They were stuck here until the Council reinforcements arrived, and they'd just get mind-controlled too, just like all... the... rest...

Shepard's mind slammed to a halt, scattering the panic just long enough for a single thought to coalesce. All the rest, he repeated to himself with a surge of renewed hope. He curled his hand into a fist to make sure. Yes, the thing hadn't mind controlled him. It could easily control the entire crew of the _Normandy_ and drive a psychic message straight into his brain, _but it hadn't controlled him_.

That was it. It had limits. It wasn't omnipotent. He seized onto that thought like a lifeline, focusing on that single idea with every fiber of his being. His thoughts slowly calmed from the panicked circles they had run in, driving away the cloak of despair. His mind flashed back to high school history class, remembering the one and only lesson that was applicable to his real life. As XCOM had first learned so long ago, there was only one solution to an impossibly powerful psionic that liked to turn people into puppets: Kill it with extreme prejudice.

His mind made up, he stood gingerly, his legs unsteady under him. He turned to face the rest of the squad, finding all of the organic members in similar states of recovery as he. Legion and Rex merely watched, one in impassive calculation, the other in concern, as their comrades struggled to their feet.

"Ugh," Williams groaned, standing up from where she had fallen beside Kaidan. "That was... unpleasant."

"Just a bit," Shepard agreed, taking careful steps as he regained his equilibrium. "Everybody alright?" he called out to the rest of the squad, only to receive a collection of mumbled agreements and complaints. "Good. Now to keep it that way, make sure your helmet stays on."

"Why?" Wrex grunted, already on his feet and moving easily. The krogan cradled his head in his hands.

"Because Titan Armor helmets have built-in mind shields standard," Shepard countered sharply, drawing the gaze of the entire alien contingent. "It's probably the only reason we're not being controlled by that thing along with the rest of the _Normandy_."

"You have _mind shields_?!" Garrus asked incredulously, freezing halfway to his feet and falling back over because of it.

"Yeah, pulled them out of the Ethereals' heads at first," Shepard answered, a hint of amusement in his tone. "It doesn't make you immune to psionics, but it sure as hell helps. It also helps to have a focus," he coached the aliens in the basics of countering foreign mind control. "A single thought you can devote every ounce of your attention to. I doubt any of you will be able to fight off a mind control unaided, but if you can fill your mind with a single thought, it's much harder to seize control of your body."

Garrus loosed a low whistle, but went silent quickly. Judging by his mutterings, he was trying to practice. Shepard cast a gaze over the other aliens to find them in similar states. He nodded to himself. It probably wouldn't do much if they lost their helmets, but anything was better than nothing. He turned away from the alien members of the squad and back to Williams. "How's Kaidan?"

"He's alive," she said, looking up from her place crouched over him. "Beyond that, I couldn't tell you. Whatever that thing did to him, he's out cold. I can't revive him."

"Damnit," Shepard cursed throatily. That wasn't good. Carrying around a wounded soldier would make this fight that much harder, but he refused to leave a man behind. There was nothing else for it then. He reached down and picked up the lieutenant, throwing him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He raised his voice to the rest of the squad. "Soon as we're ready to move, we're headed back to the research station. EDI said the controlled _Normandy_ crew were trying to open a portal under it. Ten to one odds, that's where this thing is."

"What're we waiting for then?" Garrus said, with just the slightest tremor in his voice. His voice dropped and he adopted a disturbingly serious air. "We need to stop it. Now."

"Agreed," Nihlus said smoothly. The turians nodded at each other and started off, heading back to the entrance to the hall and the route back to the research base.

"It's not going to be that easy," Williams cut in pragmatically as the rest of the group fell in line behind them. "I don't know what this thing is, but it's both a comm psi and an indirect psi, at least, with more power in both than I've ever even _heard_ of. I'd put money on it controlling the researchers as well."

That sobered the group rather quickly. There were dozens of innocent people in that camp, and if they wanted to get at the Thorian, the squad would have to go through them. The next couple minutes passed in silence. Shepard was grateful for it as he fought a fierce internal battle. This thing needed to be stopped, there was no question of that, but he couldn't have another Khar'shan on his conscience. He just couldn't take it. Every fiber of his being begged to any god or spirit that was listening to not let that happen.

Rex, as if sensing his spiraling mood, slowed down slightly, until he wound up directly alongside Shepard and pressed against his leg in a silent show of solidarity. Despite himself, Shepard felt his spirits begin to rise a bit and let his free hand drop to scratch the dog's ears. Gratitude toward the robot swelled in his chest, and he allowed the familiar moment to buoy him.

Several seconds later, the silence was broken. "Shepard?" Tali began, her voice hesitant and unsure. He turned to look at her and she continued. "What did it mean? Who's the Prometheans? And what did we usurp?"

Shepard blew out a long breath, very aware of how everyone's attention was now focused squarely on him, even Legion's. "I have no idea," he admitted at length. "All I know for sure is that the Ethereals did something to it."

"Indeed," Nihlus interjected, his voice cutting through the noise Shepard's announcement created. "I recognized some of the images from historical accounts of the Ethereal War. Those it called Prometheans are known to us as the Ethereals."

Shepard nodded. "What he said. The psychotic bastards apparently couldn't leave _anything_ alone and did the same to it that they tried to do to humanity."

"But you killed them," Tali said, her voice full of confusion. "Shouldn't it be thanking you instead?"

"It said 'Scions of the Prometheans'," Garrus answered, his voice thoughtful. Shepard could almost see the gears turning in the turian's mind. A talon fingered the suit of Titan armor he was wearing. "Human tech is, for the most part, derived from, if not outright copies of Ethereal technology. It probably put two and two together and thinks humans are working for them."

"Punishing the children for the sin of the fathers who hate me," Williams said grimly, her voice full of that indescribable quality that comes with quoting something.

"Hebrew Torah. Exodus. Chapter 20, verse 5," Legion said in recognition. "We acknowledge this as the most probable scenario."

A moment of silence dragged on as the group digested that. "In the end, it doesn't matter what it thinks," Williams said, her voice and posture making her scowl obvious to all. "It's made meat puppets out of hundreds of people and doesn't care who or what gets in its way. We have to put a stop to it."

"Seconded," Nihlus said, throwing in his two cents. "This thing has to be stopped. Today. I refuse to let more innocent people become thralls."

Shepard nodded grimly, but said nothing. His thoughts turned to just walking, every corner of his mind consumed by the mundane process. He didn't want to think about what they would have to do to do that.

* * *

Several minutes later, the squad found themselves mere meters from the doorway leading out toward the research camp's barricade. Shepard gently set Kaidan down against the wall where he'd be out of the way, and hopefully safe, until they could come back for him. "Listen up," his voice cracked like a whip through the small space, grabbing everyone's attention. "This Thorian thing probably has the scientists, and by now Liara as well, under its control. It's not going to like us looking for it. We're going to have a fight on our hands."

Grim silence met his pronouncement. Even Wrex seemed sober at the thought. "We are _not_ going to kill them," he said firmly, in a tone that would brook no arguments. His gaze bounced from through his subordinates, always waiting for them to acknowledge his order before moving on. "These people will be fighting against their will. Lethal force is an absolute last resort. You don't go there unless the choice is your life or theirs. Am I clear?"

Agreement, clear and sharp, came from every single one of them and Shepard couldn't help but smile. These were good people. "Good. Tali and Legion, you've got sixty seconds to sneak around the barricade and set up a crossfire. Stick together and watch each other's back, alright?"

"What?" Tali said in surprise. She continued in the same breath, objection clear in her tone. "But Shep-"

Shepard cut in before she could build up any steam. "I don't really care right now Tali," he said pointedly. "We don't have time for this kind of bullshit. The two of you are the only ones with a Ghost module installed. Deal with it."

She flinched away from him and shrank in on herself from the reprimand. "Yes Shepard," she said, her voice hurt.

Shepard sighed, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Teenagers. He leveled a glare at her. "This is more important than holding a grudge over ancient history," he said forcefully. "Lives are at stake. Will you work with him or not?"

"Wha- I- That's no-," came Tali's flustered response. She stopped herself and took a deep breath. "Yes, yes I will."

"Good. Now get out there," he ordered with a gentle shove of her shoulder toward the door, where Legion was waiting patiently. "And be careful."

"We will," Legion said, before he vanished in a shimmer of blue light. Tali nodded and disappeared a heartbeat later. The pair, now only visible on his hud as a pair of yellow-white outlines, slipped through the door without another word.

Shepard slowly counted out the seconds, amusing himself by watching the outlines of the geth and quarian through the wall and trying to picture the terrain they were moving through. It served well enough to keep his mind busy as the timer ran out and he moved up to the edge of the door. The rest of the squad moved up behind him, tense and ready to charge forward at the first sign of need. Shepard heaved a deep, steadying breath, then carefully peeked around the corner. He really hoped this worked. "Jondum! It's Shepard! There's an absurdly powerful psionic somewhere underneath this camp! Your people are in danger!"

Silence reigned. The asari and salarians manning the barricade didn't even flinch, their weapons remaining trained on the open doorway. Damnit. The thing had gotten to them already.

"You can fight this!" he called out, pouring everything he had into the shout. "Focus your will! Concentrate on fi-"

The words died in his throat as a sudden sense of furious presence surged to the forefront of his mind. The Thorian's hate and fury settled over the area like a heavy mist, heavy, unfathomable, and all consuming. Its psychic voice rang in his mind once more, pouring through his consciousness in a booming echo, but he was expecting it this time. Prepared force of will allowed him to retain his presence of mind despite it all.

**YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM ME, FLESHLING!**

Every single one of the defenders turned from the doorway in perfect concert. Weapons were brought to bear, not on his position, but directly on Tali and Legion. Shepard's eyes went wide and he called out a warning that was lost in the sudden cacophony of gunfire.

"_Keelah!_" Tali barked in surprise as she threw herself forward in a desperate dive for cover, Legion not even a full step behind her. Sparks flew from their armor as the enormous rain of bullets pinged off of it, scoring light damage to the advanced armor plating. The duo managed to scramble behind the nearest prefab building in a matter of seconds. "I, I think, it can see through cloaks!" Tali panted out the obvious.

Good. If she could make bad jokes, she was alright. And since the defenders were nice enough to turn away from the door and shoot at the infiltration pair, Shepard decided he'd take their invitation. He waved a hand, beckoning the rest of his soldiers, and barked "Go!"

The squad shot through the door in bounding strides and surged across the six meters between the door and the barricade. The defenders manning the barricade immediately turned back to focus on them, and Shepard cursed. Fucking c-psi bullshit!

Beside him, Rex threw himself up and over the four foot high barricade. Five hundred kilograms of pissed off vahlenite in the shape of a dog slammed into two salarians, taking them to the ground with a solid thud. Shepard winced, hoping the dog hadn't landed on either of them. He couldn't dwell on it for long however, as the rain of bullets around him intensified. He threw himself into a roll and hit the barricade with a solid thump.

"Urdnot!" he barked loudly. "Shockwave!"

The krogan grunted a response and a rapid series of biotic pulses shot from him in a line, plowing into and over the barricade. Sudden cries of surprise and pain rang out as the aliens behind the barricade were scattered by the force. Shepard shot to his feet and found himself face to face with a salarian. His fist lashed out on reflex, slamming into the thrall's head with a wet crack and it crumbled in a heap. He spared just enough attention to make sure his victim was still breathing before turning back to the fight. The defenders at the barricade had all collapsed. Unconscious or dead he couldn't be sure, but they were no longer fighting.

His head snapped around a beat later as Tali's voice called out in a pained cry. He turned just in time to see her, caught in a brilliant blue glow, come flying around the corner of the building she had sheltered behind and slam into the ruin just over two meters away. An asari on his side of the same building flared blue and punched her hand at the quarian, firing the tell-tale swirling bolt of a biotic warp at the quarian. Shepard's vision went red and his psionics lanced out at the asari, throwing her into the side of the building where she hit with a sickening crunch. The asari's limp form slowly collapsed to the ground and left a small streak of blue blood along the wall above her.

Shepard could only watch helplessly as the biotic bolt careened toward the frozen quarian. Mass Effect fields flared chaotically for an eternal instant, sending the sound of vahlenite plates and synthetic muscle being ripped and torn asunder echoing through the camp, before dying with an audible fizzle. The battlefield fell silent, or so it seemed to him anyway. He couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. "Not again," he croaked at last, fighting against the sudden onslaught of tears and overwhelming rage. "Not again."

And then Tali's voice sounded out. "Legion!" she cried, surprise, shock and honest worry in her voice. The spots in his eyes from the biotic lightshow faded, to reveal the geth standing protectively over the quarian, his left arm gone at the elbow. White fluid dripped slowly from the stump to land among the small pieces of what had once been his hand and forearm.

Relief suffused Shepard's being and nearly buckled his knees. A silly grin touched his lips and he didn't even bother fighting it. Hah! The past would not repeat itself today!

Suddenly, something tackled him from the side, throwing him heavily to the ground, as the roar of gunfire renewed. Rex's snout appeared before his eyes and the dog barked loudly at him before smacking the side of his head with a paw. Right, Shepard realized. There was still a job to do.

He rolled back to his feet, keeping himself low and under the cover of the barricade. He could hear bullets whizzing by far too close over his head as he watched more of the scientists pour out of the prefab buildings, some of them grabbing the guns dropped by their fallen comrades. A streak of yellow suddenly grabbed his attention, revealing Jondum Bau blitzing towards him from the nearest building, less than four meters away.

Without even taking the time to think, Shepard threw himself into a dive away from the barricade. He landed awkwardly, taking the impact on his wounded shoulder, and cursed loudly from the sudden shock of pain. His flinch dropped him onto his back, just in time to witness the salarian spectre leap over the barricade like a demented frog, a full eight feet straight up, his omnitool already formed into that wickedly sharp blade Shepard had seen casually violate a geth trooper. The Spectre had also donned some kind of holographic armor, covering his head, torso, shoulders, and arms in plates vaguely resembling ancient platemail. Shepard had no idea how holograms were supposed to work as armor, but it had to do _something_ other than look weird.

A beat later, the first wave of scientists hit the barricade and filled the air with enraged screams. Most of them were unarmed, mindlessly throwing themselves over the metal barrier in a living tide meant solely to bog them all down.

Shepard didn't spare any attention for them though, choosing instead to focus on the more pressing matter of the salarian Spectre about to skewer him. He rolled back over his good shoulder and swung onto his feet, the Spectre's follow up swipe drawing a line across the chest plate of his armor. Fuck this guy was fast.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring down the barrel of Jondum's submachine gun. His instincts and training took over, sending a burst of psionic energy that smacked the weapon out of the Spectre's hand. Jondum's finger got caught in the trigger guard, and broke with a loud crack as the gun bounced off the ground, firing wildly into the air.

The salarian didn't even blink. The instant the gun started moving, his other hand lashed out in a blindingly fast flurry of stabs and swipes that drove Shepard further and further back. Then he hit the wall. Time seemed to slow as the blade shot forward, aimed straight at his heart.

A sudden sense of mindless fury surged through the back of Shepard's mind as, out of nowhere, a _grappling hook_ of all things snared the salarian's weapon arm in its claws. Shepard could only watch in mute surprise as the hook tightened instantly, stopping the thrust in its tracks and yanking the Spectre off his feet. He traced the cable back and found Garrus, surrounded by several seemingly unconscious bodies, reeling in the salarian like an enormous fish.

"Need a hand there, Shepard?" he called out, absently kicking one of the bodies by his feet as it twitched.

The mix of gratitude and relief he really didn't want to feel evaporated quickly as Jondum twitched his hand and cut the cable towing him back. The loose end whipped wildly through the air, tearing great gouges through concrete and flesh alike. The asari directly in front of Garrus was almost bisected by the flapping cable, a smooth line drawn from hip to opposite shoulder that let the slimy ropes of her intestines bulge out into the open air.

Jondum flipped to his feet, tearing the claw off of his arm as he went. He flicked his hand in an almost absent gesture at Garrus. The turian, still distracted by the fate of the unconscious and now piteously moaning asari, exploded in an enormous icy ball, jagged spears of ice sticking out of his body like a macabre, over-large snowflake. Frost coated everything within a meter of him, including the bodies at his feet. Frozen skin cracked and broke as, even unconscious, they tried to move away from the sudden chill.

A precise, cold fury settled over Shepard. That was it. The Thorian was going to die. Painfully. He dismissed the air of amused nonchalance that tickled his mind at the thought, forcibly ignoring the thing's influence. A wave of psionic power shot at the salarian, pulling a gasp from Shepard as he neared his mental limits. The wave slammed into the salarian and bowled him off his feet, sending him into a tumble he quickly recovered from, cartwheeling into a flip over the barricade where he disappeared from sight.

Shepard cursed, but before he had even finished the word, Jondum reappeared, his SMG somehow back in his good hand. Bullets pinged off the commander's armor as he scrambled away, small bursts of frost forming in their wake. Somehow, the bullets were slowly freezing him, even as they chipped away at his armor.

With that, Shepard realized he had only one choice left and finally loosed his rifle, swinging it to his shoulder. He pulled the trigger before he had even lined up the shot. Plasma burst forward, slamming into the barricade in front of Jondum with a terrific roar. Glowing molten shards of steel flew through the air in a chaotic shower of deadly shrapnel. Blood fountained as the nearby thralls were struck, but they ignored their wounds with a single-minded intensity, completely focused on covering the squad in piles of bodies as those with guns tried to strike them down.

Jondum was thrown from his feet by the blast and the holographic armor burst apart in a shower of orange-yellow sparks. He jumped back up, his armor ripped and torn by the numerous finger-sized pieces of the barricade that peppered his body. He surged back on the offensive immediately, but far more sluggishly than before. Shepard felt a small amount of relief at that. Not even the Thorian could counteract biology.

The Spectre charged at Shepard, eyes blazing with alien fury. Just as he passed the barrier however, Rex slammed into his side in a frenzied leap. The dog's momentum threw the salarian aside, the slim alien's body simply unable to compensate for a several thousand Newton collision. Jondum fell back soundlessly, separating from the dog in the process, and slammed back-first into the barricade with a meaty thwack. His head flopped back from the momentum and bounced off of the metal with a sharp crack. He twitched once and went still, somehow still standing despite clearly being unconscious.

Shepard's gaze moved away from the Spectre and slid along the barricade, to find the squad, sans Garrus and Legion, standing mostly unharmed surrounded by unconscious bodies. Only Nihlus, Tali and Legion were still fighting, forced as they were to move slower against the armed thralls. The last of them fell quickly to precise blows from Tali and Nihlus and Shepard felt the adrenaline start to seep out of his blood.

"N-no!" a familiar voice cried out loudly a beat later, bringing all that adrenaline surging back. A door slammed open on a nearby prefab and Liara stumbled out, falling to her knees right outside the door. Her hands were clasped tightly to her temples as she screamed, "I won't!"

The asari started spasming wildly, as if having an epileptic fit. Her legs flexed suddenly, flinging her forward, where she landed heavily on her stomach. With each motion she made, Shepard could feel the primal fury of the Thorian growing stronger. Liara was actively fighting against the thing's control, with no experience and no assistance, and she _wasn't losing_. He ran for her, the rest of the squad right behind him. When he reached her, he knelt down beside her, and was soon joined by Williams.

"Keep an eye out for any more of the Thorian's thralls," Shepard ordered as he gently rolled the asari over. The squad immediately set up a perimeter around them, ready for a renewed attack. The gunnery chief cast an experienced eye over the prone asari and nodded to Shepard, signifying that she was physically unharmed. He let out a breath, just as the aura of seething hate blanketing the area intensified, worming its way into his hindbrain and forming once more into words.

**I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA! BEGINNING AND END! YOU CANNOT DEFY ME!**

Liara went into convulsions, her arms and legs flailing wildly. One of her limbs struck Shepard in the chest and sent him tumbling back, even as she bellowed, "NO!" The psychic pressure redoubled, and Shepard could hear Tali collapse somewhere behind him. Flashes of corruscating blue burst from her form as her biotics began firing randomly. Weak, unfocused mass effect fields filled the air, sending the squad scrambling for cover.

Shepard got a building between himself and the desperately struggling asari and poked his head around the corner. "Keep focused, Liara!" he shouted. "Pick something and think of nothing else!"

The asari's entire body lit up with corruscating blue energy and she _screamed_. A low, terrified, angry sound that bypassed the logic centers of his brain and went straight to his fight-or-flight instinct. The wall of the prefab she had emerged from abruptly exploded as a biotic discharge slammed into it, tearing open a ragged hole over six meters across. The Thorian's psychic voice crashed into Shepard's mind once again.

**YOU ARE MEAT, GOOD ONLY TO DIG AND DECOMPOSE! SURRENDER TO THE INEVITABLE!**

"Fuck," Liara growled out through clenched teeth. The word was just barely audible from Shepard's shelter. "You."

The biotic corona surged in renewed strength, bursting out from the asari's body into an enormous dome that covered the entire research camp. Enormous pressure slammed into Shepard's back and shoulders as gravity doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled. His legs gave out under the strain and he fell in a heap. The walls of the prefab he sheltered behind buckled, collapsing under their own immense weight. From his position, prone on the floor, he could just barely see Liara's face. Her eyes had gone pitch black, even the sclera, and it may have just been his imagination, but he could have sworn he saw small purple flickers deep within the bottomless orbs. Liara's voice filled the air, strident and furious. Each word was spat with equal venom, slowly and absolutely furious. "Get! Out!"

The dome exploded. A surge of enormous force slammed into Shepard, squeezing the breath out of him and pulling tendrils of blackness along the edge of his vision, before dissipating completely. A psychic scream full of terrible rage and fierce agony stabbed into his mind like a million knives. Raw pain surged through his body in an uncaring tide, washing away all other thought. It was too much. He blacked out.

A few seconds later, consciousness returned. The almost-constant sense of presence from the Thorian was completely gone, and Liara lay curled in on herself protectively, sobbing quietly. Shepard gingerly climbed to his feet, trying to will away his renewed headache. "Everybody okay?" he called out, casting a look around at the others, even as he waved Williams over to check on Liara. The gunnery chief nodded at him and moved in a tender gait to the fallen asari.

"I will be as soon as I can move again," Garrus' voice called out.

Shepard's head snapped around in an instant, right back to where Garrus had been frozen, only to find the space empty. Shepard hurried around the barricade to find the turian had fallen over, probably because of the gravity surge, still locked in the same position he had been in earlier. Shepard felt a grin cross his lips from the heady mixture of both relief and a chance at poking fun at the ex-cop. "Need a hand there, Vakarian?" he said with a purposefully bad imitation of the turian's twang.

"Ha. Ha. Very funny," he shot back, completely deadpan. He sighed. "Just get me back on my feet already."

"I dunno, you work better as a lawn ornament like this," Shepard countered, even as he grabbed Garrus' frozen form. He set the frozen turian back on his feet and whipped out his pistol, quickly swapping it to torch mode. The plasma torch, even held over an inch away from the surface, made quick work of the layer of ice, and in a matter of seconds, Garrus broke out with a crack like thunder. The turian nodded in thanks to Shepard and moved to join the rest of the squad. Shepard swapped the torch back into pistol mode and made to follow, but a sudden cough from his left brought him swinging right back around, plasma pistol aimed and ready. Garrus was only a beat behind him, covering the source of the sound from the other side of the barricade with his still partially frozen plasma rifle.

Jondum was, in defiance of all reason after that gravity surge, still standing slumped against the barricade only a couple of meters away. Rivulets of green blood ran in streams along the wall behind him to form a puddle at his feet. He coughed again, and thick drops of green were flung from his mouth. "It's gone?" he asked no one, his voice full of both pain and hope. He chuckled weakly and cried, "It's gone!" He tried to lift himself from the wall and screamed loudly, terrific agony filling his voice. He fell back against the wall, blood flowing out of his back in renewed streams.

He panted heavily, each breath drawing a small, pained whimper that echoed through the area. "Williams!" Shepard barked, not taking his eyes off the Spectre. He was wary of a trap, but the Thorian seemed almost hurt by whatever Liara had done to it. His gut told him this was genuine, that Jondum was free. He glanced over to Williams, and spotted Nihlus and Legion headed his way. The chief looked up from Liara, who had just risen to a sitting position. "We've got wounded over here!"

"On my way," she replied, disengaging with Liara after waving Tali over to help.

"Don- Don't bother," Jondum choked out. His head fall back against the barricade with a pained cough "The barri- barricade pierced my armor. Spike in my lung."

"Then do not talk," Nihlus said harshly as he pulled up beside his colleague.

Jondum laughed bitterly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "It is, no more, than I, deserve," he panted out. "I could not fight it. I did not fight it."

"Ridiculous," the turian Spectre barked as Williams arrived. She began gingerly poking at the salarian, attempting to get him off the wall. "You could not have beaten it."

The salarian's hand jerked weakly. "Irrelevant." He opened his mouth to continue, but in the same instant, everyone there could feel the Thorian's attention had been restored. Jondum's eyes went wide, terror clear in his gaze. "It's under the transport!" he forced himself to say, almost too fast for Shepard to follow. His gaze locked with Nihlus'. "Use the crane to move it, look for the stairs!"

Nihlus nodded and spoke, his voice angrier than Shepard had ever heard. "We will, and we will kill it. It won't take you again."

Jondum twitched sharply, and a piercing scream of agony poured out of his throat. "It will," he said, with absolute certainty. His limbs started jerking unsteadily. It was clear the Thorian wanted its slave back. "There's no time!" Something Shepard couldn't define entered his gaze, something between hope and raw desperation. "I'm dead al-already," he said quickly, never breaking his stare with Nihlus. "Le-let me die myself."

Nihlus returned his stare without expression. The only sign of his inner turmoil was the slightest movement of his mandibles. "Please," Jondum begged, one hand grabbing the collar of Nihlus' armor before spasming open and falling back to his side. He spoke again, his voice weak. "Please."

Without looking away, Nihlus' hand shot out, pulled the pistol off the salarian's thigh and blew a hole in Jondum's chin. Shepard winced, and Williams sent the Spectre a piercing glare that he ignored easily. He returned the pistol to his fellow Spectre's holster and gently closed the salarian's eyes. "May the spirits watch over you, old friend," he whispered with a bowed head.

A second later, the turian's head rose and he turned to face Shepard. "We still have a job to do, Commander," he said, an almost undetectable hint of fury in his tone.

"Damn straight," Shepard agreed fiercely. "Let's get to it. Take everyone not doing something and see if you can find the crane he mentioned. We're ending this."

Nihlus nodded stiffly and strode off towards the wrecked transport, barking orders as he went. Shepard watched him go, wishing he could be upset with the Spectre for killing Jondum. He sighed. Unfortunately, he understood all too well.

He walked briskly over to where Tali was just helping Liara to her feet. The asari stood, leaning heavily on the quarian and looked up as he approached. "Sorry to rush you, but we don't have a lot of time," he said as soon as he got close. "You able to move?"

"Yes," Liara answered quickly, taking her weight off of Tali. She wobbled slightly, but kept her balance. Her expression hardened into a grim implactitude, and her voice dripped with deadly certainty. "I am coming with you to wherever that _thing_ is and _I am going to kill it_."

Loud rumbling drowned out Shepard's response as Nihlus' crew apparently found the crane. On the far side of the research camp, the wrecked transport was in the process of bodily flipping over before falling on its back with an echoing boom. Shepard waited for the echoes to die before asking Liara, "You sure about that?"

She stared straight into his eyes, and, even with the visor in the way, he got the uncomfortable sensation that she was looking directly into his soul. He was forcibly reminded that she had fought off the Thorian's control with nothing but sheer force of will. "Yes."

For the first time since this thing revealed itself, he felt rather confident in their chances of getting through this. "Let's go then."

* * *

The stairs underneath the transport descended into an inky darkness that chilled Shepard to the bone, and the constant sense of the Thorian's presence, the heavy air of malevolent attention weighed heavily on his mind. A deep, primal part of him wanted nothing more than to turn around and run, as fast as he possibly could. He couldn't do that, but he so _wanted_ to. To start running and never, ever stop.

It would be easy too. All he'd have to do was stop fighting it, give in to the fear. Let it carry him far away. The others would try to stop him, they would demand he stay and fight and die. If he wanted to leave, the asari would have to die; she had the power to drag him back. That couldn't happen. He couldn't let it. All he had to do was pull the trigger and vanish into the ruins before the others could respond, and he would be free to run. They wouldn't be able to stop him, not even the insufferable metal bastard that decided to tag along.

What did he ever see in the thing? It's an AI, a synthetic. What possible use could a geth ever be? The damned cold ones refused to see their place. He'd have to show it to them after he got away. He'd disappear, but he'd be back and both the robots would pay for their insolence. It was only right. What had they ever done for him?

Images flashed through his mind, of a batarian slaver being thrown aside by half his weight in pissed off cyberdog, of a thousand nights plagued by nightmares until he hugged the only thing left of home to his chest, of a million peaceful moments spent with his most loyal companion. Shock brought his mind screeching to a halt. What the hell? What the _fuck_ had he been thinking?

Raw disgust and self-loathing surged in his breast and he had to fight down his gorge. A beat passed and the proverbial lightbulb lit up. His heartbeat sounded loudly in his ears, the steady rhythm perfectly in time with the sudden surge of absolute, mind-consuming fury he felt. "Nice try, you son of a floater whore," he shouted down the tunnel, his voice alone nearly enough to melt steel. Nearly the entirety of the rest of the squad jumped as he suddenly broke the leaden silence. The looks they sent him went unheeded, the anger had far too strong a grip on him now. "For that, you die slow!"

His seething rage was met by a sudden outpouring of far deeper fury. He tripped over nothing, overwhelmed by the sheer depth of the Thorian's hate. Rex caught him on his back as he stumbled, providing an anchor to the man, as he always had. Shepard shoved off the dog's shoulder and regained his feet, every inch of him demanding blood from the arrogant muton at the end of the tunnel. He took a bounding step, knees bent to shoot down into the blackness.

Rex growled in reproach, low and steady, breaking through the haze of anger and freezing him in place. He fought against himself for a long second, honestly unsure if his sudden bout of homicidal rage was from himself or another attack from the Thorian. Wrex, of all people, stepped up beside him and pulled him back gently. It took everything the commander had, but he managed, inch by painful inch, to clamp down on his emotions. Finally, he did it, forcing the rage behind bars of iron self control.

He nodded gratefully at the krogan and rubbed Rex's ears. "Thanks," he said to both. He blew out a loud breath and turned to the rest of the group. "Be careful, it's taken to being a lot more subtle. Keep an eye out for mood swings and weird thoughts."

Their response was lost as the Thorian's mental voice echoed through his mind once again, the endless fury now tempered by something he couldn't quite define.

**ARROGANT FLESHLING! YOU ARE NOTHING! A SACK OF MEAT CLAIMING DOMINION OVER FORCES YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND! THE GIFT IS MINE AND MINE ALONE! YOU WILL SUBMIT OR **_**YOU WILL DIE**_**!**

"Go blow it out your ass!" Williams shouted back at it a second later. A wordless, angry cry echoed through Shepard's mind in response, soon followed by a series of real, physical sounds. Rapid, slapping footfalls filled the enclosed space, growing louder and louder.

"Form up!" Shepard barked. "We've got incoming!"

The squad smoothly shifted their formation so that Nihlus, Tali, Rex and Wrex forming a wall across the tunnel for whatever was coming to break against. The rest of the troops fell in behind them, forming firing lanes to devastate anything they needed to. Unfortunately, even with the vision enhancements built into his armor's visor, Shepard couldn't see more than ten feet past the front line. Tension thrummed through his body, tightening with every sound that came out of the darkness.

The sharp crack of snapping concrete heralded the end of the interminable stalemate. Out of the blackness, strange, shambling figures emerged. The newcomers looked vaguely like a male human, with four limbs, two legs shaped much like a human's and two arms ending in four-fingered hands, and a head, all in roughly the correct positions on a torso.

The head looked nothing like a man's however. It had no eyes, nose, or anything other than an enormous mouth. Rings of jagged, fibrous teeth flexed in their eternally open mouths, forming a vicious sucker much like a lamprey's. Bile and drool dripped in equal measure from the creature's maw as they charged out of the blackness in a slavering tide.

Unfortunately for them, the squad was ready. Plasma filled the air with a punishing storm of light and fury. It didn't take more than even a glancing hit for the creatures to light up like dry tinder. Roaring flames filled the hallway, spreading through their tightly packed ranks like a wildfire. One by one, the creatures were all caught in the blaze.

But even that couldn't stop them. The creatures mindlessly charged until their legs gave out, then they used their arms until those burned apart, then they flopped angrily toward the squad. An implacable, silent tide that would not yield, that could not break. Malicious hunger filled the air, a deadly anticipation that demanded the squad's death to appease it.

The front line held strong though, with liberal use of riot shields, fists and disintegrating blasts of plasma or vahlenite. The creatures died in droves, filling the entire hallway with flaming chunks of whatever they were. They broke against the squad like waves against the shore, shattered and cast aside by furious blows and blazing plasma. The creatures came and they died just as quickly, falling one by one until nothing was left but burning corpses.

Waves of intense heat rolled away from the firestorm, filling the hall with dancing shimmers on top of the flickering firelight. It was disorienting to watch. Shepard waited a moment, wondering if any more were to come, but it appeared as if the Thorian had run out of these things for now. Low, impotent fury billowed through the air and Shepard had to force himself not to laugh at the stupid thing. Who's submitting now?!

He grinned and whistled sharply, the sound barely audible over the crackling of the flames. "Urdnot and Nihlus, clear a path," he shouted, once the squad had turned to look at him. "Follow them back the way they came. Garrus, you're helping me carry Liara across this."

"Huh?" came the turian's intelligent reply. "Why?"

"Because she's not in a suit of armor rated to indefinitely stand in anything lower than 10,000 Kelvin," Shepard explained easily, even as he moved beside the flushed and sweating Liara. He grabbed her arm and positioned himself to protect her from the worst of the flames on one side of the path, even as Garrus adopted a similar position on the opposite side. "You are."

"Right," the ex-cop said as the pair easily carried Liara, who had curled into a ball, through the path the krogan and Spectre were forging. He looked down at the asari, and said with a long-suffering air, "Next time, just wear the stupid armor."

* * *

The squad pressed on, the firelight behind them fading into darkness in a matter of seconds. Tense silence descended over the squad as they pressed ahead. Shepard's muscles were taut as a bowstring, his eyes struggling against the darkness for any hint of more of the Thorian's minions. There was no way something that had been around for millennia had a last resort that went down that easily.

Despite his worries though, nothing ever came of it. Several minutes of tense movement after they left the burned corpses behind, faint light trickled into the tunnel. It was such a gradual change that it took almost a full minute before he consciously realized it, and when he did, he realized he could hear something as well. A low, wheezing pulse that teased his ears in a regular rhythm. "Anyone else hear that?" he asked quietly as the sound got louder with every step they took.

"Yeah," Wrex rumbled in response. "Too regular for wind. Sounds like breathing. Think it's the Thorian?"

"God I hope not," Shepard mumbled. "It sounds huge. Knowing my luck though..."

Wrex grunted wordlessly in agreement and the low whine of a heavy plasma charging up echoed through the enclosed space. A grin touched Shepard's features. Sometimes, it was like the krogan could read minds.

The squad rounded a corner and the end of the tunnel was finally in sight. The squad emerged, blinking, into the sunlight cast down into the enormous opening in the ruins above them. They stood on a narrow stretch of ground that dropped abruptly into a seemingly bottomless pit after less than five meters past the wall they had emerged from. To either side, the shelf, for lack of a better term, ran in a broken circle all around the massive, several tens of meters wide pit.

Shepard only barely noticed all of that though, as caught up as he was by the source of the heavy sound. Massive vines, each as thick as Wrex was tall, extended out of the walls surrounding the pit and came together, twining around each other and descending into the top of an enormous bulb, keeping it suspended in mid-air. The bulb was twenty meters across if it was an inch, and was covered in lumpy, misshapen yellow-green growths that expanded and contracted in time with the constant breathing sound. From the base of the bulb hung five thick, ropy tentacles that quivered in the air with every breath the thing took.

"W- what in the spirits' name is _that_?" Garrus asked in an odd voice.

"The Thorian," Liara said grimly, her voice tight and angry.

Shepard felt his eyebrow rise. "It's a plant," he said incredulously. "How the hell is a plant mind controlling people?"

"I do not know how it works," Liara answered, her voice firm and unyielding. "But it _is_ the Thorian. I can feel it."

The sheer conviction in her voice triggered his instincts. She was _sure_, and he had no proof to counter her claims, despite the nonsensical nature. "That makes absolutely no sense," he said aloud. She made a noise of protest, but he bulled ahead. "But it won't hurt anything to torch this thing anyway. Either way, we're getting rid of an eyesore."

The tentacles quivered abruptly and began weaving intricate patterns in the air. Faint ribbons of purple slid out of the thing to describe sigils and signs that hurt the eye. At the same time, the Thorian's voice reached deep into his mind once more.

**USURPER, YOU HAVE SLAIN MY THRALLS, VIOLATED MY SANCTUM, AND DESTROYED MY CREEPERS. ALL UNDER THE PETTY DELUSION THAT I CAN BE SLAIN. **_**I AM NOT SO LIMITED, FLESHLING.**_

Fuck, Shepard thought. She was right. How the fuck did that work? "We'll just have to see about that then, won't we?" he shot back, refusing to show his confusion. He trained his rifle on the bulb that must be the Thorian itself. It didn't like that. It spoke again, poisonous rage pouring into Shepard's mind in a nauseating rush.

**ARROGANT MEAT! YOU ARE AN ABERRATION! A SPARK OF THE GIFT ETERNALLY TRAPPED IN FLESH! YOU CANNOT FATHOM MY EXISTENCE, LET ALONE END IT!**

"Uh huh," Shepard said dismissively, despite the sudden surge of unease the Thorian's words had stirred. What the hell did it mean by that? He shrugged it off and twitched his rifle slightly. "I bet this says otherwise. Let's find out, shall we?"

In response, a sudden scurrying sound came from behind and to both sides, pulling Shepard's attention away from the enormous plant. Through all three entrances to the ledge the squad was on, more of the creatures they had encountered in the tunnels, creepers as the Thorian called them, were visible, packed in like sardines. He couldn't even begin to count their numbers, but there were easily fifty visible, and the flow behind them showed no sign of slowing.

Among them were a dozen asari, four from each entryway. Each asari's skin was a deep, forest green color and, to Shepard's minor distraction, they were all utterly naked. Even more disconcerting, they all looked _identical_, even down to the purplish birthmark on their right breast. Their faces were twisted into the same expression of cold fury and every one of them held up a biotic barrier, saving the creepers from the fiery death the last group had suffered.

Sudden biotic light flared to life at Shepard's side, just barely caught by his peripheral vision. "What have you done?!" Liara demanded angrily. The blue corona emanating from her skin gave her features a demonic cast. The Thorian's response was dismissive.

**FLESH FREELY GIVEN MAY BE SHAPED AS DESIRED.**

A scream of raw fury erupted from the normally bookish asari, but before she could react, the wave of creepers hit. The asari allowed the barriers to dissolve and the creepers poured in en masse.

Wrex bellowed an echoing roar and threw himself forward to meet the charge from the left. The ancient krogan's fists and head lashed out in a whirlwind of destruction, pulping at least one creeper with every blow. Oozing liquid flew through the air as they burst like overripe tomatoes, painting that entire section of the ledge a fluorescent green. He swatted aside creepers in a relentless advance toward the nearest asari, reaching her in a matter of moments. His fist lashed out and grabbed her by the face before she could react. Biotic light flared around his arm and, with a bellowing roar, he slammed the green alien into the ground with terrific force.

The ledge shook as the asari's head practically exploded. Shards of bone and green-blue blood splashed over everything nearby. At the same time, biotic force lashed out at everything around him, throwing two more of the asari and over a dozen of the creepers off of the ledge, where they fell to their deaths in silence. "These aren't asari!" Wrex's gravelly voice cut through the sounds of furious combat.

"What?!" Liara shouted, surprise and outrage in her voice, as a biotic throw tossed the lead creeper of another charge back into the ranks behind it, bowling them all over, before a shower of plasma from her pistol sent them all up in flames.

"No asari has green blood," came Wrex's reply. The krogan stopped speaking for a moment as he unleashed a biotic warp at the last asari-shaped thing on his side. Chaotically changing mass effect fields sprung to life, tearing into and through the creepers before slamming into his target. She had just enough time to look startled before she was bloodily ripped apart, pieces flung out into the crowd of creepers quickly closing back in around her. "Whatever they are, it isn't asari."

Liara nodded to herself and started to move. Her biotics flared, casting deep, flickering shadows over the area. "GET DOWN!" she screamed, the sound poured out of her and bypassed Shepard's logic centers entirely. He was belly down on the ground before he could even think about it, just like everyone else but Wrex and Legion.

A beat later, the last two probably wished they had complied. Liara waved her hands in an intricate pattern, finishing with a thrust of an open palm at the space between the door they had come in from and the right opening, both full of creepers. A singularity burst into being under her direction, consuming everything around it with a deafening roar. Heavy winds roared to life, whipping through the area with the force of a tornado. The nearest creepers were pulled in like they were nothing, brought closer and closer until they hit the event horizon.

What came next, Shepard would never be able to adequately describe. As the creatures crossed some invisible line, they stretched, as if made out of silly putty. They stretched and stretched and stretched, stitching impossibly thin lines straight into the heart of the singularity as more and more of the creatures were consumed.

Wave after wave, there was no end to the raw power of the singularity. Wrex was forced to slam his feet into and _through_ the floor, bracing himself with the concrete, while Legion clung to a pillar jutting from the very edge of the ledge with all of his strength. Even the Thorian itself was effected, the vines holding it in place visibly straining against the relentless pull.

Liara held the singularity for several seconds, but even her will could not be sustained indefinitely. She gasped quietly and slumped in place as the singularity faded. The winds died nearly instantly, and the creepers caught but not yet consumed collapsed to the concrete with wet thumps, thick green blood oozing out of their shredded bodies like sap from a tree.

Then a shower of plasma from Legion, Rex and Wrex filled the air before anyone could recover. The creatures went up like dry tinder, quickly becoming a massive conflagration capable of melting through the concrete on which they lay. Creeper and asari-thing alike were consumed by the blaze, and the survivors were gunned down by the trio's accurate and devastating fire.

In a matter of seconds, what had once been a seemingly endless horde was nothing more than flame and ash. Impotent rage blanketed the area and the Thorian's heavy breathing quickened, drawing everyone's attention. Psionic light burst out of it like a spear and slammed right into Liara's head.

The asari flinched back and toppled over, hitting the ground with a hard bang even as her hands came up to clutch her temples. She screamed, a primal sound of pain and fear. White hot rage at this thing that refused to just fucking die flared in Shepard's breast. "Kill it!" he roared, swinging his plasma sniper around at the Thorian.

Liara's cries intensified, even as a veritable wall of plasma slammed into the Thorian. Wet hissing sounds filled the air with every hit, an eery accompaniment to the asari's constant screams. Steam billowed from the Thorian's wounds and it began thrashing against its vines, throwing about by the constant impacts.

The stink of roasting mushrooms filled the air as the steam began to be joined by smoke and faint traces of open flame. The Thorian's presence surged to the forefront of Shepard's mind, full of pain, anger, seething hate, and, for the first time, real fear.

**THE HARVEST IS COMING, USURPER! YOU WILL FALL AS HAVE ALL BEFORE YOU!**

"You first!" Shepard roared, with a bolt of plasma directly into the heart of the pulsing bulb. A blast of agony shot into his mind, even as his ears were assaulted by a high-pitched, keening wail that sent shivers racing down his spine, and Liara went mercifully silent. The Thorian hung there, suspended by its roots over a miles-deep hole, covered in weeping holes and charred flesh. Small fires flickered along its surface and it hung limp. Even its oppressive presence had finally lifted, for the first time since they had landed, Shepard realized, now that it was gone.

His comm chirped a second later and EDI's voice came through clearly. "Commander, the crew has regained control of themselves."

He blew out a low breath. "Thanks EDI," he said, relief clear in his voice. "That's good to hear. Get whatever medicos we can spare down to the research camp as soon as they're up for it," he ordered. "A lot of those people are going to need help."

"Yes Commander," the AI replied instantly. "Do you require assistance?"

Shepard shot a look at Williams, who had crouched beside Liara and begun examining her. The gunnery chief met his gaze and made to speak when the asari beat her to it. "I am fine, Shepard," she said without opening her eyes. Her fingers massaged her forehead. Her voice was weary as she continued. "It is only a headache."

"Then no EDI," he replied. "Just get us a po-"

A loud tearing noise from behind him cut him off abruptly. The squad whirled as one, guns ready, only to find a purple-skinned asari in a dark bodysuit falling out of a yellowish growth stuck against the far wall. She collapsed to her knees and fell to all fours before it, choking and coughing loudly for several seconds. Finally, she seemed to clear her airways, because she shook her head and shoved herself back up into a crouch. "I'm free!" she cried happily, her voice thick, as she finished standing. Her gaze moved to the squad and she froze abruptly. The squad's weapons slowly lowered and the tension seeped out of her. "I suppose I have you to thank?"

"Who the hell are you?" Shepard asked, startled. "And how did you wind up inside that thing?"

"My name is Shiala," the asari answered, her voice weary. "I served Matriarch Benezia. I followed her, even under Saren's banner." That pronouncement brought the guns right back up. In the face of the sudden hostility, she raised her arms in surrender. Her voice poured out of her in a rapid stream, nearly tripping over her tongue in the rush to get the words out. "She, we all, could see the path he was to walk. She sought to guide him down a... gentler road."

Williams snorted loudly. "Eden Prime has thirty thousand corpses that say otherwise."

Shiala flinched in response, and nodded sadly. When she spoke, her voice was full of self-loathing and regret. "You are correct. Saren is... compelling. Ultimately, Benezia willingly joined his cause."

Liara's voice cut in suddenly with a puzzled tone. She gave the other asari a piercing look. "That does not sound like Mother. She is not one to be dissuaded from her chosen path."

Shiala nodded slowly. "No, she is not." The purple asari exhaled shakily and visibly braced herself before continuing. "Saren did not dissuade her. He subverted her. He subverted all of us."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out," Garrus broke in incredulously. Shock and disbelief warred in his tone as he continued. "Are you saying Saren is _psionic_?"

"I cannot say," Shiala answered, her arms twitching as the squad's weapons wavered. Shepard waved the guns down and she let out a sigh of relief and let her arms drop. "If so, it is unlike any psionics I have ever heard of. All I know is the result. We, Benezia and all of her followers, came to believe in his cause, supported his goals."

"Where the _fuck_ did he magically get psionics from?" Shepard demanded angrily. "Hell, how the hell does something like that even work in the first place?"

"It is not Saren himself," Shiala answered. "He has a vessel, an enormous warship larger than anything in Citadel Space."

"Nazara," Legion's voice cut off the asari's attempts to continue. "She speaks of the Old Machine."

Shepard nodded, unable to speak further as his mind replayed his last conscious moments on Eden Prime. A slow shiver went down his mind. That thing was terrifying enough just being a ship. Was it psionic too?

Shiala sent a confused glance at the geth, but continued cautiously. "I do not know what it is, but that vessel can dominate the minds of Saren's followers. Subvert them to his will. That is why he calls it Sovereign."

Shepard glanced at the ceiling, beseeching whatever powers that may be to answer his next question. "Why do things always have to get worse?" There was no answer of course, but he felt a lot better for having asked it. When he looked down, Shiala was blinking in confusion. He waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. Anyway, you were saying?"

She shrugged off her confusion and started speaking once more. "Sovereign indoctrinates all who draw near. The process is subtle, slow. It can take days, weeks, maybe even longer, but it _always _succeeds. In the end, it is absolute." She paused and took a deep, shaky breath. "When I arrived on this world, I was a willing slave."

She trailed off into silence, her eyes closed as she appeared to relive her experiences. Nihlus stepped around Shepard and laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and her face was twisted in one of the most vulnerable expressions Shepard had ever seen. Nihlus' voice was gentle as he spoke. "Why did Saren come here?"

She stiffened, but seemed to draw strength from his presence, enough to answer the question. "He needed an asari to retrieve the Cipher from the Thorian."

"Cipher?" Shepard asked as he stepped around Nihlus so the asari could see him fully. "What's that? And why did he need it?"

She sniffed quietly and turned to look at Shepard, stepping out of Nihlus' grip as she went. "The beacon on Eden Prime gave Saren a vision. A vision that was supposed to lead him to the Conduit. But it was unclear, confusing. It was meant for a Prothean mind. In order to comprehend it, he needed to think like a Prothean. Intimately understand their culture, their history, their nature."

"The Thorian has been here nearly since life began on this planet, long before the Protheans built this city." She shivered in repressed horror. "It watched them. Studied them. And when they died, it consumed them. They became a part of it, as I was meant to be." She hugged her arms around her stomach.

"So... what?" Shepard asked. "The Cipher is some kind of decryptor for Prothean thoughts?"

"In a manner of speaking," Shiala confirmed. "The Cipher is the very essence of being a Prothean. Perspective that cannot be adequately explained or described, only experienced. Saren offered me to the Thorian in exchange for this knowledge. It agreed."

"So you, what, melded with the Thorian, then Saren, then he left you behind to be eaten by the thing?" Shepard asked, disgust in his tone. You don't leave people behind like that, no matter what.

"Essentially, yes," she admitted. Her voice was bitter. "He used me to get what he wanted, then ordered his geth to destroy all evidence of the Thorian's existence."

"He's trying to hide his tracks," Wrex rumbled from the back of the group. "And he failed." A short guffaw rang out. "What I wouldn't give to see his face when he finds out about this."

"He tried to destroy the Cipher," Shepard mused aloud. "That means he doesn't want anyone to find it." His eyes met Shiala's. "That means I want it."

She nodded. "You saved my life. I would gladly be of whatever assistance I can." She stepped forward and raised her arms, but was brought up short by the commander's raised hand.

"Hold up," he said at her confused expression. "No offense, but you're an admitted former servant of the people we're hunting. You're not getting in my head."

She looked affronted for a brief instant, but sagged a moment later and nodded. "Very well, I cannot blame you for your suspicion. How do you plan to retrieve the Cipher then?"

"Liara!" he barked.

"Yes, Shepard?" The asari was at his side in an instant. He shot a glance her way, to find her looking almost eager. He grinned slightly at the sight. She clearly knew what was coming.

"You're a Prothean specialist. Want to learn how to think like them?"

"Yes!" she almost squealed, practically wiggling in place.

Shepard turned back to Shiala. "That's how," he said without fanfare. He was proud of himself for this idea. This way, he'd have the information available on demand and he wouldn't have to let a potential enemy agent get a peek into the _Normandy_'s plans. Not to mention that having a Prothean expert that could literally think like a Prothean could make the hunt for a Prothean artifact an order of magnitude easier.

Shiala looked from Shepard to the overly excited asari next to him, then back again. She looked a bit disconcerted. "I... if that is your wish."

"Please," he replied perfunctorily. She nodded and stepped forward. Liara mirrored her movements until they stood only inches apart. Each asari raised a hand and laid it against their opposite's cheek. A low chant in a musical language Shepard's omnitool couldn't translate followed, a rapid exchange of dialog that, even as an outsider, sent a thrill through his blood.

Finally, the words reverted to something he could understand. Both asari closed their eyes and spoke in perfect unison. "Open yourself to the universe," they chanted, the lyrical tones somehow reverberating through the room. Their eyes snapped open, replaced by fathomless pools of deep, eternal black. "Embrace eternity."

A second passed. Two. Three. And the pair stumbled back, falling to the ground with twin cries of shock and pain. Nihlus, Williams and Shepard shot forward, but the asari were already climbing to their feet as they arrived.

"What happened?" Nihlus demanded, his gaze resting suspiciously on Shiala.

"I... I am not sure," the purple asari said shakily. "It was unlike any meld I have ever experienced before."

"Yes," Liara agreed, just as unsteadily. "I couldn't break the meld. It was as if something was trying to force us to become one..." she trailed off and shivered violently. At length, she spoke again, her voice tentative. "Perhaps it was a result of your imprisonment?"

"Perhaps," Shiala acknowledged, but her voice was full of doubt.

"However it happened, are you both alright?" Shepard asked, earning a slow nod from each.

"I believe so," Liara said. "Though I would not wish a repeat of the experience."

"Did you get the Cipher before... whatever happened?"

She paused for a moment and spoke, a long string of harsh, nonsensical syllables that echoed off the walls around them. When she finished, she looked a billion times steadier, as well as on the verge of hyperventilation. "Yes," she squeaked happily. "I can speak Prothean!"

"Good," he said, keeping a cautious eye on the giddy asari. She was going to be like that for days, he could tell already. "Let's get back to the _Normandy_ then." He looked to Shiala. "We'll escort you to the surface."

She bowed her head graciously and moved to walk alongside Shepard as they began to journey back. "Thank you, it is greatly appreciated."

* * *

"Councillors," Nihlus said curtly. He sounded nearly as tired as he felt, he noticed absentmindedly. His eyes danced away from the Citadel Council's holographic forms, idly following the contours of the Normandy's comm room. He caught himself and chided himself for his weakness. Being exhausted was no excuse for distractions. He forced his attention back to the Councillors and spoke. "Commander Shepard has finished his operations on Feros." His voice remained stoic as he continued. "The final death toll includes a geth cruiser and its cargo, several of the researchers investigating the Prothean ruins on the planet, the Spectre Jondum Bau, and the only known sample of a previously unknown species of sapient plant with enormous psionic power."

The Council traded uneasy glances. "Explain," Sparatus demanded, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.

So he did. He told them everything. From the moment the squad landed until they emerged from the Thorian's lair. Nothing was edited, nothing was spared. Every detail he could remember was laid out in exactly the fashion he remembered it happening, in a smooth, even monotone. Throughout the entire process, his voice hitched only once, when he covered the events surrounding Jondum's death. Anger, grief, and a low, twisting hate for that blasted plant boiled within him, kept at bay only by decades of military experience and training. He refused to let it show though. He was stronger than that. He forced it down, shoved it aside as he continued his debriefing.

"This is... troubling news," Councillor Tevos said once he finished, her hands working in an unconscious gesture of worry. "How are the surviving researchers faring?"

Nihlus' mandibles quirked slightly. At least there was one piece of mostly good news out of that mess. "Most of the researchers suffered only minor injuries. The medics Commander Shepard provided served their role admirably until the Council vessels could arrive. We managed to avoid all but eight deaths, including Jondum. Most of the others are already ambulatory."

"Excellent," Councillor Valern spoke responded quickly. "What of the creature though? This... Thorian?" The salarian tested the word carefully.

"Dead," Nihlus answered instantly. Fierce, feral satisfaction swelled within him as he remembered that. It was far from sufficient payback, but it would have to do. "We have been very thorough in ensuring it." For a brief instant, so fast he almost missed it, Valern looked almost... disappointed.

"Excellent work," Councillor Sparatus cut in with a nod, disrupting Nihlus' train of thought. When he had recovered, the expression was gone. "This is a lifeform unlike anything we have ever encountered before however." Sparatus looked to his colleagues briefly. "We will need to monitor it to ensure it does not recover."

"Agreed," Valern said and Tevos nodded her approval. "I will task the STG with devising means of observation that do not expose the observers to undue risk." The other Councillors made noises of agreement, so he tapped a note into his omnitool. When finished, he looked back to Nihlus. "Do you have anything more to report?"

"There is one last matter of note, Councillors," Nihlus answered tiredly. His body was begging for rack time, but he would do his duty come hell or high water. Weariness would not stop him.

"And that is?" Sparatus prompted gently. Nihlus unconsciously tightened his stance at the Councillor's tone. He was slipping, he chided himself, if even a career politician could tell how tired he was.

"The Reapers, Councillor," he said simply. Sparatus' mandibles pulled down into a frown. "If Shiala's testimony is correct, the Reapers are either frighteningly powerful psionics, or they can emulate the effects of such. I am... becoming concerned."

"There is still no evidence the Reapers are real," Valern countered dismissively. "It is far more likely it is a trick. A smokescreen, designed to ensure Saren's geth followers will remain under his control."

Tevos opened her mouth to contribute, but Sparatus raised a talon, cutting her off abruptly. She glared at him for a brief instant, but settled without audible protest. The turian Councillor met Nihlus' gaze steadily, his eyes probing. Nihlus tried to return the stare, but he abruptly knew, with absolute certainty, that he was being weighed and measured, and some distant part of him realized he could not afford to be found wanting. There was an implacable will behind those eyes. Tireless devotion that both humbled and terrified him to behold. The reason why Sparatus enjoyed his position in the Hierarchy had never been more clear to Nihlus than in that instant. Finally, the turian Councillor broke the silence. He spoke clearly, carefully enunciating each and every word without breaking eye contact for a second. "Do you believe the Reapers are real?"

"Yes," Nihlus said, grateful for the distraction despite himself. "There is too much circumstantial evidence, very little of it directly related. I do not know the full scope of the threat they pose, but I believe they are a threat."

Sparatus kept his appraising stare on Nihlus for several more seconds before nodding and breaking the gaze. Tension drained out of the Spectre in a rush. Whatever the Councillor had sought had been found. "Very well." He looked to his colleagues, and said, his voice gently questioning. "If there is nothing more?" They indicated a negative, so he turned back to Nihlus. "You're dismissed. Get some sleep." And the holograms disappeared.

* * *

"Good day, Emissary Udina," Councillor Tevos greeted the human cordially as he strode into the Council's private meeting chambers. Please, Athame, let him be reasonable. Just this once. "We have called you here to discuss Commander Shepard's latest exploits."

A greying eyebrow rose. "You are referring to the incident on Feros." It was not a question.

"Yes," Councillor Valern cut in smoothly. "His actions in discovering and then neutralizing a grave threat to our people is appreciated. Please convey our gratitude to the Commander."

"I will see to it that he gets the message," Udina acceded easily. Brown eyes swept over all three Councillors, and when he spoke it was in the blunt tones Tevos had unfortunately grown far too used to. "But you wouldn't have asked me here to act as a messenger."

"No," Tevos agreed calmly. She levelled a serious gaze on the emissary, trying to impress her ire upon him. "Your people are, as we speak, tearing apart valuable Prothean ruins. You will explain why, then you will order them to desist."

He returned her glare with an insouciant smile. "No," he said, blunt as always. Tevos scowled. Goddess above, why did this man have to be so infuriating? He opened his mouth, but Councillor Sparatus cut him off.

"Need I remind you that you are operating on one of our worlds Emissary?" the turian's voice cracked like a whip through the tension building in the room. His mandibles flared and he levelled a fierce stare at the human. "We do not take kindly to invaders."

"Which is why I am going to explain our reasons," he said, to all appearances unperturbed by the abrupt hostilities in the room. He paused for a moment and gave Tevos an inquisitive glance. She waved a hand, urging him to continue, and for once, he complied.

"The XCS _Normandy_ encountered a new, hostile psionic lifeform. Our personnel now on Feros are following standard protocol for first contact with any new hostile force. We are gathering samples, performing analyses, and otherwise dissecting its remains to determine what, if anything, can be learned from it. If another of these creatures appears, we will be ready for it."

A sudden throbbing erupted against the asari's temples, and she had to fight to keep her face straight. Wonderful. They were in the grip of their paranoid delusions again. "Be that as it may," she said aloud. "This Council does not exist to submit to your paranoia. You will order your people to desist and remove them from Feros immediately."

Udina's lips tightened into a thin line. When he spoke, it was in a low, tight voice. "We are not in the habit of allowing potential threats to go unrecognized."

"And we are not in the habit of letting foreign powers tear apart valuable archaeological sites under our control, doubly so for Prothean ruins," Sparatus countered, his voice determined. Tevos nodded her emphatic agreement. "You will remove your people immediately, or we will take more drastic measures."

Udina scowled and his eyes darted to meet each of the Councillors'. Tense silence reigned for several seconds, but in the end, he nodded. "Very well," he said, his tone easily conveying the silent 'you idiots' he was polite enough to leave unsaid. "However, we _will_ be taking whatever samples can be freed without further damage to the ruins."

Udina's stubborn tone made it quite clear that was the only concession they were going to get out of the man. Tevos glanced to Sparatus, who shrugged noncommittally, then Valern who, after a brief pause, nodded slightly. "That is... acceptable," she conceded with poor grace. "But there will no longer be any living humans on Feros in five standard days."

The human nodded stiffly. His eyes tracked over the other Councillors once more. "Was there anything else?"

When Tevos indicated a negative, he spun on his heel and walked away. She sighed. Why couldn't humans be easy to deal with?

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Thorian  
June, 2183  
**_This specimen, reportedly claiming the name 'Thorian', is both highly intriguing and extremely disturbing. Physically, it matches the characteristics of what, in normal circumstances, we would classify as a fungus. It appears to share several characteristics with Earth lichen, most notably a tendency to adhere to hard surfaces and to form jagged, tendril-like growths that are capable of burrowing through even the strongest of materials in time. Cursory examination of the location it was discovered provided evidence of at least several hundred kilometers of organic material once part of the specimen in a vast network of roots spread throughout the ruins of Feros. Current estimates suggest this network likely reaches most of the surface of the planet in some fashion._

_In many ways, it is unique however. Preliminary findings suggest it is incapable of reproduction, and, seemingly, of natural death. Our best estimates of its age range from 125,000 to 70 million years. In addition, in blatant defiance of most lichen growth patterns, it formed a single, central node that, we theorize, serves much the same purpose as the cerebral cortex in humans. This node contains a collection of organic material in bizarre patterns we have never observed before. Anywhere._

_These strange patterns are what grants the specimen the properties that render it so simultaneously interesting and horrifying. It is a fungal growth that has achieved sapience. Further, it is a sapient fungal growth with _psionic abilities_. The mere _idea _of a psionic plant is mindboggling, and according to the field reports, it is easily orders of magnitude more powerful than any human psionic has ever been, even Col. O'Connell. Examination of the subject indicates a startling correspondence between these patterns and the neural patterns of the Ethereals. We can only conclude that these patterns allowed the subject to express and control its psionic energy. We believe that, in time, we will be able to replicate these neural patterns using artificial materials._

_Preliminary experiments indicate that such a device could greatly boost the effectiveness of psionic abilities, to a level far beyond anything our existing psionic amplifiers are capable of. Such technology could also, theoretically, be combined with certain elerium configurations to create true artificial psionics. It is difficult to draw firm conclusions this early in the research process, but nothing yet found contradicts this theory._

_**Speculative Note: **__Reports from the ground team that discovered the specimen suggest that the Ethereals may have acquired their psionic abilities through examination and experimentation performed on this creature. Our own observations have discovered possible signs, estimated between 27,000 and 419,000 years old, that could have been left by such processes, but it is far from conclusive proof. Further investigation will be required before any conclusions can be drawn._

_If this specimen is truly the source of the Ethereals' psionics, the information it contains would be earth-shattering. Whoever uncovers its secrets would be remembered alongside Dr. Vahlen as one of the greatest scientists in human history. If only the goddamned Carnifex had left it intact!_


	17. Recovery

**Chapter 16: Recovery**

"How is he, doc?" Shepard asked the ship's doctor as he strode into the _Normandy_'s medbay, Rex on his heels. He moved to the foot of Kaidan's bed and swept his gaze over the medical equipment scattered around it. He couldn't make heads or tails out of any of it, but the one thing he recognized, a heartbeat monitor, was beeping regularly. That had to be a good sign.

Doctor Chakwas looked up from her desk, where she had been filling out paperwork in quick hurried keystrokes. Her eyes were stony, as if a granite wall had slammed down behind them. Her expression alone sent his heart sinking. That was decidedly _not_ a good sign.

"The news is not good, I'm afraid," the doctor said quietly. She stood and moved over to the lieutenant's bedside, where she fiddled with the equipment until holographic images flared to life above it. A few deft motions of her hands selected two of the images and inflated them. She took a step back and waved Shepard up beside her. "Take a look."

He complied, realizing as he did so that the images were MRI scans of Kaidan's head. Both images were drawn entirely from varying shades of grey and black, resolving into different angles of the same image. One was obviously from the side, showing the distinctive outline of a human brain within a skull. Shepard frowned as he noticed jagged black lines that disrupted the smooth light grey in chaotic patterns. The second image was from the top of Kaidan's head, showing the oblong, grey shape interspersed with more strange strips of black just big enough to be visibly distinct. He didn't know what those images were supposed to be telling him, but he got the feeling those black portions weren't supposed to be there. "What am I looking at?" he asked, his voice hesitant. A big part of him didn't want to know.

"Lieutenant Alenko's MRI results," Chakwas answered somberly. Her finger came up and traced it along one of the black lines. "Each of these tears is the result of severe trauma to the cerebral cortex. Whatever that _thing_," she spat the word like a curse. "did to him overloaded the neurons with tremendous surges of electrical activity. The damage is beyond our ability to repair." She took a deep, steadying breath and looked the commander in the eye. When she spoke, her voice was both grave and final, a pronouncement of fact that could not be denied. "Lieutenant Alenko is clinically brain-dead."

Shepard's eyes closed and he sagged in place, only distantly noting Rex's sad whine. "Damnit..." he muttered quietly. Guilt and a low, quiet anger at himself boiled up within him. The familiar feeling of knowing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if he had just gotten help faster, reacted quicker, been stronger, one of his soldiers would still be alive. "There's nothing you can do?" he asked quietly.

"No, Commander," Doctor Chakwas' voice was gentle. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "I've done everything I could. I'm sorry."

"Yea, thanks doc." He sighed heavily. Logically, he knew there was nothing he could have done, just like the far too many times before. He had done the best he could. The blame for Kaidan's fate lay firmly with the sectoid-fucking plant that liked to mindrape people. His hands unconsciously tightened into fists, an instinctive response to the sudden flash of red-hot rage surging through him, and started shaking from suppressed tension. He nodded tightly at the doctor, mumbled something, he wasn't sure what, and strode stiffly out of the room. He was going back to his quarters before he did something stupid.

His mood must have been clear on his face, because even in the usually crowded mess hall on the _Normandy_'s crew deck, he never once had to divert from his path. The telltale clicking of Rex traipsing along in his wake was the only sound in the abruptly silent room. Somehow, his sheer presence was enough to cow the upwards of ten people in the room. He might have found that amusing, were he in a better mood. Instead, it just soured him further. Thankfully, he found himself in his quarters in short order. He blew out a noisy breath and sat cross-legged on his bed, as he always tried to do when meditating, and quickly tried to order his thoughts.

Peace of mind was well beyond his reach today though; he was far too angry. And with every failed attempt, his frustration mounted, dooming the next before it even began. He growled, low in his throat, after the eighth failure. "Fuck!" he barked, pounding a fist into his bed. "This is impossible!"

The sound of his heavy breathing filled his ears as he panted, the intense emotions swirling inside him leaving him short of breath. He focused on the sound, trying to use the regular patterns to finally calm his raging thoughts. Breathe in, silence, breathe out. Again and again, he forced himself to focus on nothing but the air swirling through his lungs.

And when even that proved insufficient, he nearly threw a tantrum. A long litany of curses tore from his mouth in an angry stream. He bowed his head into his hand and resigned himself to just being angry for a while. Nothing else was working. Hopefully everyone would have the sense to leave him alone for a couple days.

A low whine sounded from right in front of him then, and he cracked open one eye to see Rex standing patiently on the floor beside his bed. The dog's head was cocked inquisitively as he stared at the commander. "What?" Shepard snapped, irrationally annoyed by the interruption.

Rex ignored his tone with the ease of long practice however, and simply stared at him dispassionately. A second later, he grinned slightly and reached forward, setting his head in the commander's lap. Shepard shifted his leg, trying to dislodge the stupid dog, but out of armor and without using psionics, there was no way he was going to move Rex anywhere the dog didn't want to go. So he settled for glaring at the robotic canine with renewed ire.

"You're not going to move, are you?" the human asked rhetorically, frustrated with the dog's antics. Rex grinned and yipped an affirmative. Unendingly loyal support filled the sound and despite himself, even through the haze of anger still clouding his mind, Shepard's lips quirked slightly, smoothing his scowl ever so slightly. He set a hand on the dog's head. "Thanks," he muttered quietly.

* * *

Bolts of brilliant green fire flew through the air, accompanied by the crackling whine of plasma discharge. Metal warped and twisted. Concrete exploded under the barrage. Baseball-sized chunks of semi-molten rock were thrown about in a deadly hail. The tightly packed targets fell in droves, chewed apart by shrapnel and plasma, earth and fire.

Flames erupted, spreading through the entire pack in a matter of seconds, and he had to suppress an insane cackle. God damn, it was satisfying to see those fuckers burn. He swept his heavy plasma back and forth over the crowded ranks, relishing in the devastation he had unleashed. By pure chance, a ball of brilliant green slammed straight into one of the targets' gaping mouth. Fiery debris flew through the air as it exploded with enough force to bowl over all the others near it.

His palms started itching, begging for a release of the raw power he commanded but could not afford to loose. Later, he promised himself, when he had the chance. Nevertheless, his focus shifted. Indiscriminate fire became far more focused as he tried to repeat that amazing fluke of a shot. A veritable wall of plasma screamed through the air in thick sheets, utterly destroying everything in its path. And with every foe felled, another stepped forward to take its place. The seemingly limitless tide never slowed, never stopped and never faltered.

Which was fortunate, because the damn gun in his hands refused to cooperate. He just couldn't get any of the stupid things to explode. Frustration mounted with every missed shot, every failure. It fed off of the anger already roiling inside him, swiftly morphing into blind rage. Fuck it. It's go time.

He dropped the heavy plasma to hang from its strap, whipped the blaster launcher off his back, turned, and ran. Without even looking, he knew the whole horde had moved to chase him. He could hear their shuffling footsteps and rustling motions. A savage grin split his lips. Time to have some fun.

Without breaking stride, he hefted the enormous weapon onto his shoulder, doggedly keeping it steady despite the motions of his legs. He tapped in a quick series of commands, outlining the path he wanted its projectile to follow, then he pulled the trigger.

A ball of crackling, super-charged plasma almost a foot across, known as a blaster bomb, shot from the launcher's tip with an explosive crackle. His momentum carried him directly into the wake of superheated air it left behind causing shimmers to dance across his vision. Thankfully, he didn't have to stay in it long. Mere seconds after being released, the ball, in complete defiance of physics and with no external cause, took a sharp ninety degree turn straight up.

He tried to track the bomb's flight, but it left his field of view in the blink of an eye. The grin on his face turned even more feral as he barrelled past the ball's turning point and began to slow. In a matter of seconds, he had come to a complete stop and turned to face the oncoming horde. He wasn't going to miss this for the life of him.

Dozens of Thorian creepers surged forward in a wordless rush, stampeding over the cracked and broken ground. The sight brought conflicting feelings of exhilaration, a hint of fear, and fierce anger to the forefront of his mind, and, when he finally spotted the blaster bomb coming back down, he let loose the mad laugh building in his chest.

The bomb hit directly in the middle of the pack with magnificent force. Thousands of microscopic fusion reactions all triggered at once, releasing a nuclear payload of righteous fire. The ground under his feet, only fifteen meters away from the source of the explosion, bucked and quaked mightily, nearly sending him to the floor. White-hot fire turned the very air to ash in a massive conflagration that destroyed everything within eight meters of the detonation.

Even that was not enough to silence his laughter however, the sound of it both mocking and desperate, even to his own ears. He knew it was stupid, but he just couldn't stop, even as the world around him went black. Finally, the simulation ended and John Shepard trailed off into silence. He hung suspended in the simulator's antigrav hold for a long moment, relishing the emotional release. That had felt great.

Life, it seemed, did not intend to let him enjoy it for long however, because a familiar voice filled the room a second later. "That's not disturbing at all," it said, sarcastic mocking dripping from its calm tones. "Really. It's not going to haunt my nightmares for the next week. No sir."

Shepard sighed. Figures. Ah well, it wouldn't do to not respond. "That's weird," he said aloud, taking off the simulator's helmet and turning to the source of the interruption. "I could have sworn looking in the mirror would be enough to override any other nightmares, Joker."

"Really Commander? You're going to go there?" Joker returned easily with a teasing grin. He shook his head and made a soft tuting sound. "Of the two of us, which one causes people to faint on sight?"

Shepard scowled. He had no real response to that. Joker's grin grew, delighting in his small victory. Shepard pointedly ignored it in favor of turning off the simulator and stripping out of the gear. "There a reason you're here?"

The helmsman sobered instantly, all traces of mirth vanishing. "Yea. I talked to Doc Chakwas," he said quietly. "She told me what happened to Kaidan. I imagine I'm here for the same thing you are. To set up some sims of the goddamned c'thauliflower and blow it to fuck and back until I feel better."

Shepard nodded without speaking. Hopefully Joker would have better luck than he; already, the dim embers of his anger were rekindling. He sighed internally, disappointed at the result. He had hoped for at least a few hours. Maybe next time.

He wordlessly handed the last of the sim gear over to the helmsman and made to leave. Before he could reach the door though, Joker's voice called out again, a hint of his normal cheer returning to it. "Me and some of the guys were planning to do something tomorrow night. Get drunk and mock some low-budget sci-fi vid in Kaidan's honor or something. You interested?"

Shepard started, surprised by the invitation, before a small, fragile smile fought its way to his lips. "Yea," he said at length. "Yea, he would've liked that. I'll be there."

"Good to hear," Joker said, turning away from the commander and strapping the sim gear on. The helmet, the last piece, slid on as he said. "We'll grab the movie and the supplies, your job is going to be to convince EDI to let it happen."

"What?" Shepard asked, surprised. "Why wouldn't she?" But of course, Joker was now in the sim and lost to the outside world. Fortunately, he wasn't the only one listening.

"Helmsman Moreau," EDI's voice intruded into the now-ended conversation. "Is 'too easy', I believe is the term."

Shepard snorted sharply, turned, and strode from the room. "Just make sure he can use the mess, alright EDI?"

"Of course, Shepard," she replied smoothly. He nodded and vanished through the door, accompanied by her final call. "Logging you out."

* * *

The sight that greeted Commander Shepard upon entrance to the _Normandy_'s lounge was not something he had ever expected to see. To be honest, it was not something he was sure he believed was real. The sheer mind-bending nature of the events transpiring before his eyes reached directly into his hindbrain, even through the low simmer of constant anger he'd been feeling all day, and froze his every higher function.

Nihlus Kryik, straight-laced, excessively formal, turian Spectre, official representative of the Citadel Council, and all-around hardass sat unsteadily at the lone table in the room. A shot glass was gripped tightly in one taloned hand, and a half-empty bottle of what must have been high-quality liquor was standing in the other. The turian was in the middle of telling some kind of story to Williams, who had her own bottle of beer in hand, on his left and Legion across the circular table from him.

"Sos then he," Nihlus was saying as Shepard walked in. The turian's voice was a strange mix of drunken slur and occasional high pitched chirping that the translators couldn't catch. It was a strangely melodic sound despite the mess the alcohol made of the words. "He dove out the window and," he started laughing helplessly, and barely managed to choke out his next works. "and a, a loaf of _panem_ wa- was stuck in his horns!"

Williams burst out laughing, joining the turian Spectre in his revelry. Legion's gaze moved smoothly between the pair, and he said, "We do not understand." This only made them laugh harder, and confused the poor geth even further. His head cocked slightly as he regarded the pair. His gaze shifted to the commander, who was still standing in the doorway. "Shepard-Commander, could yo-"

"Shepard?" Nihlus interjected, cutting off the geth mid-sentence. His head jerked around and his gaze settled somewhere in the vague vicinity of Shepard. It was hard to tell exactly, what with how the turian's head kept bobbing. He blinked stupidly before blurting, "Shepard!" He waved the hand with the glass clutched in it at the human. "Pull up a seat!"

Shepard's eyebrow rose. "Nihlus," he returned the greeting cautiously as he moved over towards the table. He ignored Williams' attempts to straighten up as he approached. "How much have you had to drink?"

Nihlus blinked, clearly taken aback by the question. He set the bottle on the table and the now-free talon came up to rub his chin. He brightened a second later, ducked under the table and came back up with two more bottles of the same liquor in hand. There was one major difference between those bottles and the one on the table though. They were empty.

"Well," Shepard said, more than a little surprised. He'd have expected the turian to be unconscious after that much. The Spectre could definitely hold his liquor. "That explains that." He looked over to Williams. "How about you?"

"I'm good sir!" she barked, tried to salute, and smacked herself in the face with the bottle clutched in her hands. "Ow!"

"Right..." he drew the word out for the proper amount of sarcastic emphasis. His gaze moved from the drunken pair and to Legion. "After yesterday, I can understand them getting plastered. But you can't. What are you doing here?"

"We were seeking Creator Tali'Zorah for potential design improvements for our new arm," he pointedly held up his left arm. A working replacement had been installed, but it was clearly still in-progress. "We discovered Nihlus here instead. He requested we stay," the geth's voice shifted, becoming a perfect reflection of Nihlus'. It was probably a recording of the conversation, Shepard supposed. "because drinking alone is even more depressing."

The synthetic's voice shifted back to its normal, modulated tones. "We judged it an acceptable request." He waved a hand at Williams. "We were joined by the Gunnery Chief approximately forty-two minutes ago. Since then, Nihlus has been regaling us with past incidents in the career of Spectre Jondum Bau."

"Makes some kind of sense," Shepard said slowly. Guilt can do that to a man, he didn't say. He should know. He turned his gaze over to the turian. "Is it working?"

A high, chirping trill was his response before the turian stopped, looking cartoonishly abashed. He ran a hand over his face and spoke, stumbling over the words. "So- Somew- Kinda," he finally managed to get out.

"Good enough," Shepard replied. He strode around the table, straight over to the cabinet on the rear wall containing the liquor. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a pair of shot glasses, before taking his load back to the table. He set the glasses on the surface, poured a generous measure in each and sat down across from Williams, who welcomed him with a laugh. He slid one of the glasses over to the gunnery chief while he picked up the other a second later.

"A toast," he said strongly, lifting the glass. Williams joined him without missing a beat, but Nihlus was clearly having trouble thinking that quickly. The turian managed after a few seconds however, and all three glasses were raised.

Williams shot a look over at Legion, who returned it with a baffled glance. "You too, Legion."

The geth's head flaps flared in surprise, but he raised his empty hand in a show of solidarity. Shepard chuckled briefly. He'd have to see if he could find an equivalent to alcohol for the geth at some point. He raised his glass again, bringing himself back on task. He spoke, with the careful cadence of someone repeating an old memory. "A toast then, to the dead. We honor their memories and the things for which they bled. A toast to those gone, but remembered well. May they be ready to catch us, on our fall to hell." He finished with a flourish and tipped the burning liquid straight down his throat.

"Here, here!" Williams cheered, slamming down the whiskey in her glass in a single, enormous swallow.

Nihlus followed suit, not half a second behind. When he finished, his gaze moved to meet the commander's, and he spoke with quiet gratitude. "Thank you, Shepard."

* * *

"Dr. T'soni," EDI's voice shattered the silence in the laboratory Liara had claimed as her workspace. "May I have a moment of your time?"

Liara set down the datapad she had been studying and began organizing the clutter on the desk before her. "Of course, EDI. What is it?" she asked absently.

"There is a... situation," the AI answered calmly. Her voice was tinged with something Liara could not identify. "brewing in the ship's lounge that I am becoming concerned about. Would you be willing to assist?"

"Of course," Liara agreed quickly. Anything that worried EDI would be a big problem. She stood and made for the door. "What's going on?"

"Perhaps it would be best to see for yourself," EDI answered evasively, pulling a frown from the asari as she stepped into the ship's elevator. Now she was worried. What in Athame's name was going on? And why would she be needed to deal with it?

Various possible scenarios played out through her mind as the elevator rose to the crew deck, each more outlandish than the last. Maybe there was a leak in the hull? No, there would be alarms for that. Maybe Wrex picked a fight with someone? Or, she shuddered from the sudden realization, maybe the Thorian had survived and snuck a piece of itself on board? Her worries redoubled at that unpleasant thought. By the Goddess, don't let that be the case.

Her whirling thoughts were handily derailed when she reached the lounge's open door and beheld Nihlus, Shepard, and Gunnery Chief Williams sitting at the lounge's table, laughing gaily and surrounded by empty bottles of liquor. The strangeness of the scene was only highlighted by the presence of the stoic geth in the table's final chair.

The obviously drunk participants didn't notice her entrance, being far too engrossed in their conversation, but Legion turned and looked at her. She nodded jerkily at him, unsure how to respond to this situation.

"EDI," she said in a strained voice. "Why did you bring me here?" The trio of drunken fools started and turned to face her. She could feel her face flush in embarrassment under the sudden scrutiny. Before they could speak however, EDI's hologram appeared on one wall and her voice rang out.

"There is an unsafe amount of alcohol being consumed," the AI explained. "And they will not heed my requests for moderation. I hoped you would be able to convince them to cease."

"Killjoy!" Shepard suddenly shouted in a drunken slur. His hand, still holding a half-full glass of whiskey, whipped out and pointed a finger at EDI's avatar. "You jus' hate fun!" He blinked abruptly, only just now realizing the motion had upended his glass and poured the amber liquid all over the floor. "No! The whiskey!"

The gunnery chief burst out laughing as Shepard began babbling apologies to the fluid. Liara's headache intensified, but her ire at EDI evaporated. The AI was right, they had clearly had enough. She coughed lightly, drawing their attention. "EDI's right Commander," she said calmly, fighting down her instinctive urge to cower from the renewed scrutiny. "You've had enough."

"Bu, But the whiskey!" he said, as if that explained everything.

She gently pulled the glass from his grip. "You will survive without it," she countered. "And we can clean it up in the morning." She reached back, deep into old memories of her mother and tried to emulate the commanding presence the ancient matriarch had wielded so effortlessly. "You're done."

He blinked at her, clearly taken aback by the sudden change in her demeanor. "Bu-"

"No," she interjected forcefully. "You are too drunk to stand on your own. You will kill yourself if you keep this up." Her gaze moved over the other two. "The same goes for you. You are all putting the liquor down and going to bed if I have to drag you there myself."

As one, they gaped at her for a long moment. The gunnery chief snorted then descended into an all out laughing fit, and Liara could only stare in surprise as the woman, apparently, went insane. "Yo- you," she tried to gasp out, only to fall back under renewed laughter. "The pr-prothean geek grew s-some fangs!" she finally managed to gasp out.

Liara's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?!" she demanded, pinning the woman with a glare.

The human held up her arms in a gesture of supplication and the laughter slowed to chuckles. "No, no offense," she said with a grin that belied her words.

Liara continued to glare at her, but blew out a breath. She was six hundred years too young to be forced to deal with this. "Legion, take Nihlus and Chief Williams to their quarters please."

The geth looked to her, then to Nihlus, who was borderline insensate, and the furious scowl on the human's face. Then he looked back to her. She narrowed her eyes. The aperture over his eye opened fully and he stood up. He walked over to the turian and female human and cajoled them into standing. Without a word, he threw each one over his shoulders like a sack of grain and marched out of the door. The gunnery chief's blistering commentary on everything from Legion's parentage to Liara's relationship with a muton, whatever that was, painted the air blue in its wake.

Despite herself, Liara felt her cheeks flush at the insinuations she could still hear ringing down the hallways. She fought down the embarrassment and turned to Shepard, who was staring at her strangely. "What?" she asked, even as she pulled him to his feet. He groaned softly as he stood up, one hand coming to rest on his forehead. He stumbled slightly into Liara, and she pulled his arm around her shoulders and let him lean on her.

He turned to look at her, his eyes somehow shrewd through the drunken haze. "You... How do you _do_ that?" he asked quietly.

"Do what?" she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion. At the same time, she gently guided the commander through the first steps of walking back to his quarters.

"That!" Shepard said firmly, waving a hand in a vague gesture. His voice trailed off into a loud mumble. "'eryone jus' does what you say!"

"What?" she asked, confused.

Shepard was on a roll though, and he just kept talking alongside her. "Like tha' time on Feros! You were all 'down!' and then 'erybody was on the dirt! I's like you gots your own psionics!"

Goddess, he'd had more than she had thought. That was the only explanation for this lunacy. "Don't be ridiculous Shepard," she said with a grunt as she caught him after he tripped over nothing.

"'snot!" he insisted. "When the Th- tho- c'thauliflower!" He giggled quietly. "Yea, that. When you were fightin' it-" He paused briefly and swung his head around to stare at her. He must have felt the shiver that ran through her. He stared at her for a long second, but when she tugged him forward, he continued. "You was fightin' it and yur eyes was all black n' purple n' stuff."

"That's impossible," she huffed. "Only humans have psionics."

"'n plants!" Shepard said loudly.

"And plants," Liara agreed quietly, trying to suppress the memories. That was not something she _ever_ wanted to relive. "And I am neither."

He looked at her, his gaze lingering for a few seconds even as they walked. "You sure?"

"Yes Shepard, I'm sure," she insisted, ignoring the small twinge of doubt she felt. It was just a drunken theory, but what if he was right? The things she could do... Alas, drunken ramblings from a soldier generally weren't accurate assessments of xenobiology.

"You'd know," he said with a shrug she could feel more than see, and, to her relief, let the matter drop.

A minute or so later, the pair had made it to Shepard's quarters. She had never been more grateful to see the end of a journey before. The commander's questions raised all sorts of uncomfortable ideas. Goddess willing, she could forget it after a good night's sleep.

Her mind was in such turmoil, she didn't even register that she had laid his mostly-unconscious form on the bed until she was halfway out the door. She closed it behind her and made for her own bed, cursing her scientific nature all the way. Shepard's questions were going to bother her for years, she could just tell.

* * *

"Ugh," Shepard groaned as consciousness returned abruptly, bringing with it a rush of agonizing pain. It felt as if someone had stuffed an especially angry muton berserker into his skull when he wasn't looking. Throbbing pain pulsed against his temples in a steady rhythm with every beat of his heart, smoothly blending into the slight nausea swelling within him. "Uhhh," he groaned again, unable to be any more articulate.

He cracked his eyes open carefully and was relieved to find the room in total darkness. And then the lights switched on. "Grk!" he cried, his eyes slamming shut to block out the agonizing sensation.

"Good morning Commander," EDI's voice intruded into the silence. It was both absurdly cheerful and several thousand decibels too loud. The sound upgraded his headache from mere agony to absolute torture.

"Mrgle," he gasped out, in what he hoped was a chastising tone. "'s too loud."

EDI cheerfully ignored him and kept talking. "I do apologize Commander, but you _did_ ask me to wake you."

Did he? He forced his sluggish brain to act, to push through the pain and remember. It took a colossal mental effort, but he managed it, ever so slowly. He remembered finding Nihlus, Ashley and Legion in the lounge, pulling out a bottle of whiskey, then it all went black.

No wonder he could barely think. Just how much had he drunk?

He didn't realize he had voiced the question until EDI answered it. Thankfully however, her voice was far softer. It only jammed a handful of needles into his temples instead of an icepick. "Approximately two-thirds of a liter." She paused a beat. "Your exploits were quite amusing for the entire crew to witness."

Shepard groaned again and gingerly cracked open one eye. It immediately started watering, but he forced himself to ignore the pain in favor of sending a beseeching look at the AI's avatar in the room. "How bad?"

"My psychology programming prohibits me from directly answering that question," she answered quickly, her tone slightly conciliatory. "However, I _can_ say that Helmsman Moreau will never view tableware in the same light."

Right, he decided. He didn't want to know anymore. If there was any sort of higher power out there that felt even the slightest scrap of mercy, his head would explode before he had to leave his quarters.

"You should also be aware," EDI continued, ignoring his bout of despair. "That a video of the event has been disseminated over the Citadel extranet." Shepard groaned. This couldn't get any worse. "Congratulations Commander, you have already reached 6 billion views."

He cracked open his other eye and turned to look blearily at EDI. A note of desperation touched his voice. "Please tell me you're joking."

The blue orb blinked at him, the slit-pupil like lines surging out and back in in rapid patterns his hungover brain simply could not follow. "Are you certain you want to know?" she asked instead.

He forced himself up, so he could sit on the edge of his bed, fighting down the surge of dizziness from the motion. He set his head in his hands and slowly tried to massage the headache away. It was only then that he noticed he was fully clothed. Huh. What did that mean? He shoved the thought from his dragging mind and focused back on the conversation. It could wait. "I'm sure," he said, bracing himself for the worst.

She waited a beat to respond. "It was a joke."

"What?" he asked, shocked. That had not been expected at all.

"I made it all up," EDI replied, her tone somehow smug through the synthesized tones. "You never left the lounge last night until Dr. T'soni dragged you to your quarters." Shepard lifted his head out of his hands and leveled a glared at the AI that, even weakened by his hangover, convinced her to explain. "You made quite a mess of my lounge, Commander," she said reproachfully. "Helmsman Moreau was quite insistent this scenario was the only proper way to respond."

His glare sharpened. The sudden mix of relief and outrage slammed into the lingering embarrassment and anger at his loss of self-control into a potent mix of emotion he could barely understand, let alone express. And it wasn't doing his head any favors. "Damnit EDI," he bit out, his voice tight and angry. "Don't _do_ that!"

"Very well Commander," she replied easily. "Next time, I will not tell you."

"You, you," he spluttered, unable to articulate his thoughts through the anger that made his headache infinitely worse. The pain broke through the haze of anger and sheer agony forced him to calm down. "You're being deliberately obtuse, aren't you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," EDI replied, her tone quite clearly conveying her assent.

"Just don't do it again," he said tiredly. The orb blinked an affirmation, which he accepted with a quiet grunt. He stood up from the bed before unsteadily stomping over to the small sink built into the wall of his quarters. He took great gulps of water out of his cupped hands then splashed his face. The ritual began to make him feel almost human again.

"You realize that I'm going to get you back for this, right?" he asked a moment later. "You and Joker both."

EDI's orb blinked once at him, then flashed red for a brief second. "You are welcome to try."

* * *

"Oof," Shepard grunted as Wrex's meaty fist slammed into his side. He absorbed the blow with the ease of long practice and seized the opportunity it provided to grab his attacker's arm in a tight hold. He spun into a crouch, his back to the krogan and pulled the arm over his shoulder. His eyes flared with psionic light, and before Wrex could respond, the krogan was bodily flung over his shoulder in a textbook shoulder throw. Though most textbooks on the subject weren't likely to include a psionic lift as part of the process.

Eight hundred kilograms of reptilian fury slammed into the deck of the _Normandy_'s cargo bay with a resounding clang that echoed throughout the space. Wrex grunted as he hit and craned his neck to look at Shepard. He didn't say a word, but the message was conveyed all the same. The gloves were coming off now.

Shepard settled back into a combat stance as Wrex rolled to his feet and mirrored his stance. The commander felt an insolent grin stretching across his lips. Wrex's eyes narrowed and he surged onto the offensive.

The krogan started with a forceful jab at his right shoulder that Shepard dodged by the narrowest of margins. It passed so close, he could feel the wind pushed by the punch rushing past him. Before the first blow had even been retracted, Wrex's other fist was rocketing toward his head. His eyes widened and his hands were moving to intercept before he had even consciously recognized the move.

His hands moved to grab the krogan's massive fist, crossing in front of his eyes in the process. And in that fraction of a second bought by his feint, Wrex _disappeared_. Shepard had no idea where the krogan had vanished to, and he had no time to look. Long-ingrained instinct screamed a warning and he threw himself into a forward roll to get away.

Unfortunately for him, it wasn't quite quickly enough, and Wrex's fist clipped the back of his head with brain-rattling force. His roll turned from controlled acrobatics to a clumsy tumble and he flopped onto the deck hard. His breath was forced out of him in a rush and sharp pain blossomed from his ribs, but he didn't, couldn't, let it stop him.

Shepard rolled away as soon as he gained the presence of mind to, just barely missing a fight-ending punch from Wrex. He turned his momentum into upward motion with a single heave and was up on his feet the same instant Wrex recovered. The combatants stared each other down from mere feet away, each trying to force the other into surrender through sheer force of will.

Low panting filled the air as Shepard breathed heavily. Sharp pain flared from his injured ribs and he winced, unconsciously closing his eyes. When they reopened, Wrex was already back on the attack. The krogan barrelled into Shepard with a bellowing roar and carried the commander to the ground by main force. He landed heavily on three limbs, careful to keep his weight from crushing the human, and his free hand latched onto the commander's neck in a loose grip.

"I win," Wrex announced simply, his blunt teeth bared in a subtly mocking grin.

"Yea, yea," Shepard admitted in a wheeze. Psionic light flared from his eyes and Wrex was bodily lifted off the ground. Shepard gently tossed the krogan to the side before he sat up, one hand moving to cradle his burning ribs. Damnit. That hurt like hell. He sent a glare over at Wrex, which the krogan ignored masterfully. "Did you really have to bruise my ribs?"

"Bah," Wrex replied dismissively. "Don't start crying on me, Carnifex."

Shepard's non-verbal reply came in the form of a single raised finger, pulling a chortling laugh from the krogan. He gingerly shoved himself to his feet, wincing with every jolt from his ribs. "Damn," he muttered quietly. "You're a hell of a lot better than I expected."

Wrex grunted an acknowledgement. When he spoke, his voice held the dry note of one pointing out the obvious. "I've been fighting for fourteen hundred years Carnifex."

Shepard grunted an answer, only to gasp as the instinctive motion sent flares of pain from his bruised rib. "And you've been paying attention the whole time," Shepard conceded once he recovered. "But if you're that good," he made a vague motion toward the right side of Wrex's face, where four parallel scars drew angry lines from the bottom of his head plate all the way down to his throat. "How'd you get those scars?"

Wrex sobered instantly, the hidden, slightly jovial air he'd been sporting since the spar began broke with an almost audible crack. He stared at Shepard for a long moment and the commander unconsciously straightened under the assessing gaze. A moment that seemingly stretched into eternity later, Wrex broke the tense silence.

"I was betrayed," he rumbled quietly, somberly. "I was leading a small tribe at the time. We were _trying_ to restore order after the war." He paused briefly and blew out a steadying breath. "But the other tribes were against us. They followed Jarrod, one of the few warlords that survived the war with the turians."

"He was old, even by our standards, and so were his ideas. He wanted us to fight. Turians, salarians, each other. It didn't matter to him. He was so lost in bloodlust and ancient glories that he couldn't understand that things had changed."

"Sounds like a swell guy," Shepard said sarcastically with a cocked eyebrow.

"Heh," Wrex chuckled mirthlessly. "Something like that. He would have led us into extinction, if he'd had his way. Jarrod demanded blood as retribution for the genophage, completely ignoring the fact that we didn't have the numbers to go to war, and that even if we did, the genophage ensured we'd never recover our losses." He blew out an angry, bitter snort. "I told them all to forget about war. That we needed to focus on breeding."

Shepard winced internally. "I think I can see where this is going."

Wrex grunted. "For a while, I was stupid enough to think it was actually working. Some of the tribes started coming around." His hands balled into tight fists, and Shepard could hear his muscles and joints creak from the pressure. "That's when Jarrod called for a _krush_, a meeting on neutral ground." The krogan's voice turned mocking. "He wanted to talk."

"And you walked right into the trap," Shepard surmised without thinking.

Wrex's eyes flashed and he bodily lifted Shepard by his shirt collar to hang several inches off the ground, directly at eye level with the suddenly enormous krogan. He growled, a low and dangerous sound that rattled the crates on the far side of the hold. When he spoke, it was in a voice full of tightly leashed anger just begging for a target. "There are some laws even _we_ hold sacred, Carnifex." For the very first time, Wrex spat his title like a curse. Shepard was surprised by how much that hurt.

Wrex released the human then leveled a fierce glare on him as his feet hit the deck. The krogan spoke slowly and calmly, not giving voice to the simmering rage burning behind his red eyes. "He called for the meeting to take place at the Hollows, the graves of our ancestors. Where the skulls of our dead lay bare to remind us where we come from, and where we all go. It's as close to a sacred place as the krogan have. Violence is _forbidden_. And when your father calls you to a _krush_, you go."

"He was your father?" Shepard blinked in surprise. His eyes tracked the quartet of tightly placed scars along Wrex's cheek and felt a jolt of fierce anger on his friend's behalf. Real family doesn't pull shit like that.

"Was," Wrex grunted emphatically. "Until that day." He shook his head and continued, a mix of regret and hate thick in his voice. "We talked, but we were never going to agree. Once it was clear I wasn't going to join him, he gave the signal." The flames of anger behind Wrex's eyes flared, fueled by righteous indignation and pure loathing. His voice turned tight and dangerous. "His men leapt from the graves of our ancestors like the Void spit them back out. My tribe died quickly." The tips of his fingers slowly traced the scars on his cheek before twisting into a fist. "Jarrod pulled a _grannkat_, a bladed gauntlet, and tried to kill me with it. But I was faster. Before he could do more than this scratch, I sank my dagger deep into my father's chest and tore out his heart."

"That," Shepard began slowly, breaking the heavy silence that had settled over them both. "is just fucked up." Wrex rumbled a low agreement, but didn't actually say anything. He looked at the krogan with redoubled respect. "Thanks for telling me that," he said at length. "It couldn't have been easy."

"It was a long time ago," Wrex said, with a note of warning in his tone. Touchy subject then.

"Fair enough," Shepard conceded with a shrug. He sucked in a fast breath at the sudden shock of pain. "I need to go see Doctor Chakwas anyway." He turned and gingerly walked to the elevator. He stepped inside, but not before tossing over his shoulder, "But for future reference, if something like that happens again, I've got your back."

He never saw the look of blank surprise that appeared on the krogan's face.

* * *

"-otta know something. You can tell me," Joker was saying to Rex as Shepard walked into the cockpit. The pilot's voice held a note of pleading to it that the commander didn't hear often. The cyberdog quietly yipped a negative, and made no motion to alert the pilot to the new arrival behind his chair.

"Oh come on," Joker said exasperatedly. He shot a glare at the smugly unrepentant SHIV. "He tells you everything. You've gotta know what he's planning." Ah, so that's what this was about, Shepard realized with a sly grin. Joker's trying to avoid his comeuppance. And after only a week of waiting.

Rex barked a teasing reproach at Joker and shot him a wide, canine grin. The pilot suddenly looked a lot more nervous. "Damnit," he said with quiet realization. "You _do_ know what he's planning."

A happy bark answered him followed by rapid hyena-like snickers. Joker paled. "It's that bad?" he asked, his voice clearly conveying how much he truly did not want to know the answer.

"It's that bad," Shepard answered him in the dog's stead.

"Gah!" Joker jumped in his seat. The chair whirled around immediately and the pilot's surprised and worried gaze fell on Shepard. "Commander!" he barked quickly. His eyes darted around the cockpit. "Err... How long were you standing there?"

Shepard crossed his arms over his chest and leveled a steady, mild glare at the suddenly nervous pilot. Rex's yipping laughter filled the cockpit in the meantime, and it only got louder when Joker glared at the source. Shepard watched the byplay impassively, letting his mere presence drive the pilot to distraction.

"Long enough," he said at length, releasing Joker from several seconds of his silent, implacable stare. He smiled then, and judging by the sudden paleness of Joker's features, it was not a pleasant smile. "Rex isn't going to tell you anything, are you boy?"

Rex barked his agreement and moved over to stand beside Shepard in a display of solidarity. The commander's hand dropped and scratched his ears. "I've got something _special_ planned for you Joker."

"That's what I'm afraid of," the pilot muttered quietly. He sent a beseeching look to Shepard. "Can you at least just do it already? The suspense is killing me."

Shepard's smile widened into a grin. "Maybe that's the point," he said with an air of faux mystery. "Maybe I'm getting my revenge by making you expect something that will never come, then laughing my ass off as you run around futilely trying to prevent it."

A well-hidden flash of relief appeared in Joker's eyes. Well now, we can't have that, Shepard thought in response. His hand came up and stroked his chin. "Then again, maybe I'm just waiting for you to drop your guard before I spring it on you." The relief was gone now. Excellent.

"You're a jackass Commander," Joker spat accusingly, the glint of humor in his eyes betraying his vitriolic tone. Shepard just grinned unrepentantly.

"Look on the bright side," he said cheerily. "At least you're not EDI."

"Wha-" Joker began to ask, only to be cut off by a new, unfamiliar voice.

The voice was a deep, strident baritone, and every word was delivered with bombastic panache. "What have you done, Shepard?" it demanded, its tone reminding Shepard of nothing so much as the voice track for the latest blockbuster movie.

As it should, since that's where he had taken EDI's new voice files from.

To one side of the cockpit, her holographic projector burst to life, doubtlessly to chide him in person. Unfortunately for her plans, the hologram resolved and Joker burst out in uncontrollable laughter. EDI's usual sphere had been replaced by a semi-transparent sectoid head wearing an enormous sombrero and bandito mask. She blinked in surprise and her voice rang out in a booming reprimand a heartbeat later. "Shepard!"

"I told you I'd get you back EDI," he replied glibly, ignoring the pilot's fit of helpless laughter. Then he turned to Joker. "And just think," he said, putting a hand on Joker's shoulder. "You're my next victim."

The pilot's laughter died instantly. He sent a nervous look at Shepard and gulped heavily. "Yea... right," he said slowly, his voice heavy with dread. Rex picked up where the pilot left off and yipping chuckles filled the cockpit.

"Shepard," EDI's voice cut through the background noise like a knife. The booming melodrama of it utterly ruined any sense of threat she may have been able to generate. "I insist that you restore my files and return my backups."

He hummed thoughtfully and his hand came up to rub his chin to really sell it. After a few seconds, he concluded with, "No." He turned to the sectoid hologram and grinned widely. "Maybe tomorrow."

She was silent for a long moment. "You are insufferable, Commander."

His grin widened. "I _did_ warn you," he said in a chiding tone. "'salright though. I'll put you back to rights just as soon as I've made my point."

"Very well," EDI said in a long-suffering tone. "I must admit to being curious what you have planned for Helmsman Moreau however."

"You'll find out when he does," Shepard replied easily, completely ignoring Joker's enthusiastic echoing of the sentiment. He opened his mouth to continue when his omnitool beeped an incoming call warning. He blinked, turned toward an empty corner of the room and answered it. "Shepard here."

"Commander," Nihlus' voice came over the connection. "I have just received word from an STG agent on the corporate research world of Noveria. Matriarch Benezia has been sighted. She and a large entourage of asari commandos have arranged to visit the Binary Helix research complex."

The air of levity in the cockpit evaporated instantly. "What is she after?"

"My contact did not know for sure," Nihlus answered. "We believe she is most likely overseeing a research project on Saren's behalf."

"Agreed," Shepard said, his voice tense. He turned and shot a look over to Joker, who nodded grimly. The pilot's fingers danced over the holographic controls as he entered the ship's new course. "Let's make sure she never finishes it."


	18. Corporate Politics

**Chapter 17: Corporate Politics**

"Greetings Commander, Nihlus," EDI said as Shepard and the Spectre entered the cockpit. Her voice and hologram had been returned to normal mere minutes after the sighting of Matriarch Benezia had been reported. Missions meant to capture a centuries-old and ludicrously powerful biotic weren't the time or place for practical jokes, unfortunately. "We are nearing Noveria. Estimated time en route, forty-two minutes."

Shepard nodded in acknowledgement. "Good to hear." He turned to Nihlus. "What can we expect down there?"

"Noveria is technically not part of Citadel Space," the Spectre answered with drawn mandibles. His voice dripped with distaste. "It is a corporate research and development world, founded to maximize privacy while the corporations that fund it perform their research. Do not expect anyone to be welcoming of an investigation."

"Think you can do anything to grease the wheels?" Shepard asked with a cocked brow. "You are a Spectre, after all."

"It is... unlikely," Nihlus admitted at length, though it was clear he was not happy about it. "As I said, it is not technically part of Citadel Space. The Council has brokered an agreement with the Noveria Development Corporation to grant limited authority for official Spectre business, but the Corporation's Executive Board makes no secret of their disdain for it. I expect we will receive _exactly _as much cooperation as the agreement demands."

"Wonderful," Shepard muttered. His hand came up to massage his forehead. An entire planet of aggravating bureaucrats. That was not what he wanted to hear.

"Eh, just pick 'em up by their ankles and shake them until they agree to cooperate, Commander," Joker suggested from his place in the pilot's chair. "It's not like they can stop you."

Nihlus glared at him, but nodded. "It may well be the only way to get to Benezia."

"Wha-, you're serious?" Joker asked in surprise. The pilot peered over his shoulder at the Spectre and studied him intently.

Nihlus nodded again, meeting the pilot's eyes. "Yes." He shot an inscrutable look at Shepard. "I would prefer it remains an unused tactic, but they will not be eager to assist us. The Carnifex of Khar'shan asking in such a manner is likely to get results."

Shepard scowled at that. "Yea," he said, with a trace of bitterness. "It probably would."

The cockpit descended into a mildly awkward silence. Shepard barely noticed however, as scenario after scenario played out in his thoughts. One second, he was considering how to deal with the doubtlessly stubborn, obstructionist pencil-pusher who was going to inevitably get in their way. The next, he was trying to piece together what Benezia was doing on Noveria, what Saren was after, and coming up blank. Then how to capture a mind-controlled biotic with more experience than everyone aboard the Normandy, sans Wrex, put together. Then a hundred and one other things that were sure to get a visit from Murphy, the bastard.

He sighed into the silence. This mission was going to be a headache, and they hadn't even run into the inevitable monkey wrench yet.

As if in response to his thoughts, the cockpit's radio crackled to life. "Hanshan Control to unknown vessel," a smooth, feminine voice said easily. "Your arrival was not scheduled. Our defense grid is armed and tracking you. State your business."

Shepard shot a questioning look at Nihlus. The turian simply nodded wordlessly. This was what he had meant by 'unwelcoming'.

Joker cued his mic and responded. "Hanshan Control, this is the XCS _Normandy_, requesting a vector and a berth. Our business is classified."

"Classified or not," the radio operator's voice was decidedly not friendly. "You will state your intentions or we _will_ open fire."

Joker made to respond, but froze as Nihlus' hand landed on his shoulder. The turian spoke, calmly and with just a hint of menace. "This is Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre. We are here under my authority."

A long pause followed, and when the operator returned, his speech was short and clipped. "Very well. Landing access granted." He rattled off a vector of approach and a dock number. "Land at those coordinates and disembark. Be advised, we will be confirming your identification. If confirmation cannot be established, your vessel will be impounded."

The connection died before anyone could respond. Joker met Shepard's eyes briefly. When he spoke, the pilot's voice was irreverent and mocking. "Is it wrong of me to want to see them try to impound the _Normandy_?"

Shepard barked a short laugh. "A little," he said with a shrug. "But I can't say they wouldn't deserve it." He paused briefly. "Until they try it though, we've still got a job to do. You keep them from impounding the ship, we'll go get our missing Matriarch." He looked at Nihlus and jerked his head toward the rear of the ship. The turian nodded and left the cockpit with Shepard on his heels. Time to suit up.

* * *

Shepard walked into the _Normandy_'s ready room a few minutes later and stopped short. The squad had gathered and were quickly going through their equipment for the mission with the ease of long practice. It was encouraging to see. What wasn't encouraging was spotting Liara in the midst of the same thing. He sighed and wished for a moment that he'd never left Londinium. As if this mission wasn't problematic enough.

"Liara," he began, walking up to the asari. He tried to make his voice apologetic and conciliatory, while still being firm. "Stand down. You're not coming."

"What?" she asked in surprise, her eyes wide. The room went silent as the others turned to watch the brewing confrontation.

"You're staying on the _Normandy_," he explained calmly and simply, determined to not turn it into an argument. He softened his gaze and looked her in the eye, willing her to understand.

Her mouth worked soundlessly and she stared at him in abject shock for several seconds before she finally managed to force out one weak word. "Why?"

Shepard winced internally at the betrayed look she sent him, but steadied himself. This had to be done. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry, but you are way too emotional about this mission," he said in as soothing a tone as he could manage.

"Of course I'm emotional!" she snapped at him with a fierce glare. She batted his hand off of her shoulder. "It's my mother!"

"And that's why you can't come," he said softly. He met her gaze and tried to convey just how much he hated having to say his next words. "You're likely to get someone killed."

Liara stumbled back as if she'd been punched. "W-what?" she asked weakly. A second later, the strength of anger bled back into her voice. "I would never!"

Shepard nodded slowly. "Not intentionally," he agreed. "That doesn't mean it won't happen."

"It won't," the asari bit out angrily.

He met her gaze for a long moment, then nodded sharply. "Fine. If you want to come along, you just need to answer one question." She nodded, wordlessly prompting him to continue. "Kill your mother or Garrus dies," he snapped heatedly. "What do you do?"

Liara's mouth worked like a fish out of water, but she did not, or could not, say anything. He sighed morosely. "That's what I'm talking about." She looked away guiltily. "That kind of hesitation _will_ get someone killed." He put a hand on her shoulder and forced her to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry, I know it's hard, but you _need_ to stay here and let us take care of this."

She met his gaze through watery eyes and slowly, gingerly nodded. "Al-alright," she agreed. The admission seemed to sap the strength out of her and she nearly fell onto the bench behind her. Shepard spared a moment to steady her, then turned to get ready himself. Before he could complete the turn though, Liara grabbed his arm and spun him back to face her. "Shepard," she began, her voice verging on desperation. "Promise me that you won't kill her unless there's no other choice."

He blew out a noisy breath. "You know I can't pr-"

"Promise me," she insisted, her voice strong and her grip tightening. The fire in her eyes reminded him forcibly of the only other time he had seen that look. On Feros, seconds after she had fought her way free of the Thorian's control. She was not going to let him go without that promise.

He sighed. "Alright, I promise," he agreed.

She peered searchingly at him for several seconds before nodding and releasing him. When she spoke, her voice was relieved. "Thank you, Shepard."

He smiled encouragingly at her and when she returned it weakly, he turned to get suited up. He really hoped he could keep that promise, but something told him it wouldn't be that easy.

* * *

The first thing Shepard noticed as he led the way through the _Normandy_'s airlock and into the dock proper was the spartan yet cluttered nature of the berth. Unadorned metal walls formed a large, rectangular space that sheltered the dock from the howling winds and snow beyond the mass effect barrier around the entrance. Large, magnetic clamps had sealed on the _Normandy_'s body, locking it in place and allowing the gangway he now stood on to be brought to the airlock. The gangway extended a dozen feet from the ship before abruptly turning to the right, leading unerringly to a platform that ran along the wall on that side before disappearing through sealed doors into the adjacent docks. Cargo crates of all description littered the space, placed in seemingly random stacks on nearly every surface not dedicated to pedestrians.

He didn't have much time to study the area however, for a doorway set directly in the middle of the berth's gangway spun open and disgorged a mix of turians, salarians and even three batarians in matching matte black armor. They were also, to a one, heavily armed.

"Looks like we've got some fans," Garrus commented with a mocking air, though there was an undercurrent of tension in his voice. One taloned hand moved to his plasma sniper. "Think they want your autograph, Shepard?"

"They are NDC Security," Nihlus explained. The turian's voice was annoyed. "Though I am unsure why they felt the need to meet us at the dock."

Shepard shrugged and started walking toward the welcoming committee. "Then let's go find out what they want."

The squad trailed behind him, with Nihlus just behind and to his right, as he approached. Once they were within comfortable speaking distance, a batarian standing slightly ahead of the group raised a hand. "That's far enough."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow. "Are you always this welcoming?"

The batarian sent him a scathing look. "When a human warship shows up unannounced, you're damn right we are. Especially when it's carrying the Carnifex," he spat the title like a curse and glared at the commander. He took a deep breath and composed himself before continuing in a dispassionate voice. "Access to the port is restricted until your credentials are confirmed. Which of you is Nihlus Kryik?"

Nihlus stepped up beside Shepard. "That would be me."

"Don't move," the batarian said brusquely as he tapped a command into his omnitool. A small drone detached from the wall above the door, little more than a sphere with a cylindrical port on one end, moved to hover before the turian. A green line swept up and down Nihlus' face in rapid motions as the drone scanned his features. A minute later, it beeped and retreated back into the wall.

"Your scan is clean," the batarian said in a slightly surprised tone. "You can go through. However," his voice abruptly shifted into a warning. "Firearms are not permitted in Port Hanshan." He looked over his shoulder to a turian in the group behind him. "Sergeant, secure their weapons."

Shepard scowled fiercely behind his helmet and crossed his arms. "That _isn't _going to happen," he said firmly, stopping the turian in his tracks after less than three steps.

"You have two options human," the batarian spat with a hot glare. He pulled the assault rifle off his back and pointed it at Shepard. The rest of the security team took their cue from him and followed suit. "Drop your weapons or I shoot you 'resisting arrest'."

Shepard could hear the squad behind him readying their weapons, but he didn't so much as twitch. Instead, thin streamers of psionic power flared around him in a brilliant aura. The security forces suddenly looked decidedly nervous, especially once Wrex started to laugh at their disquiet.

"Calm down!" Nihlus snapped, interposing himself between the two. "This is not the time or place for a fight!"

The batarian twitched violently, then nodded. "You're right," he said tightly, before putting his gun away and ordering his men to stand down. Shepard nodded his agreement and let the psionic corona fade while motioning for the squad to do the same.

"I... apologize," the batarian bit out curtly once the last of the weapons were returned to their holsters. The words were forced out through clenched teeth. He closed all four eyes and took a deep breath. When his eyes re-opened, he was much calmer. On the surface at least. "I am only trying to do my job. Surrender your weapons or I cannot allow you to proceed."

Shepard nodded. "I understand that," he said calmly. He refused to let himself have less control than a goddamned batarian. "But these weapons are classified XCOM technology. We are not going to part with them."

"Then I must ask you to leave," the batarian replied firmly. His voice turned slightly bitter. "Please."

"We cannot do that," Nihlus interjected. "We have reason to believe an important fugitive we are hunting is hiding in one of the research facilities here." The batarian's scowl deepened, prompting Nihlus to continue. "I seem to recall that part of the agreement the NDC brokered with the Council is that Spectres be allowed to carry weapons. Extend that to my companions and we can all walk away from this with what we want."

"I won't have what I want until the blind Carnifex is thirty light-years away or dead," the batarian spat angrily. He shook his head forcefully and when he spoke again, his voice was slightly calmer. "But that will pacify my superiors." He blew out an angry breath and glared at the commander. "Know this Carnifex, I will be keeping an eye on you. All I need is an excuse."

Shepard nodded wordlessly and the security team dispersed, heading back through the door. He blew out a noisy breath. He couldn't help feeling he deserved that.

"That went well," Garrus chimed in suddenly.

"Well?!" Tali demanded. "How can you call that well?!"

"They didn't start shooting at us," the turian answered with a shrug. Tali spluttered indignantly, but Garrus ignored it in favor of looking to the commander. "What now?"

"Now we find the guy in charge around here and get him to tell us about Benezia," Shepard said, shaking off his melancholy. He glanced at Nihlus. "You know the guy?"

"No," Nihlus said quietly. "The administrator has changed since my previous visit. I know the way to his office however."

"Lead the way," Shepard said with a wave of his hand. The Spectre nodded, stepped in front of Shepard and led the squad into Port Hanshan.

* * *

Port Hanshan proved to be a surprisingly busy place. Shepard wasn't sure exactly what he had been expecting, but dozens of people from every species in Citadel Space bustling about in busy throngs was not it. The entrance from the docks stood on one end of an enormous, three tiered room and permitted access directly to the topmost level. Stairs to the left led down several meters to the middle tier, then another set of stairs to the bottom. All along each tier were beings of nearly every description, from hannar to turian and everything in between, all busily rushing through the cavernous spaceport.

Of course, as soon as the squad stepped through the doorway, a wave of silence rippled through the crowd. Wary stares fell on them and the nearest aliens began pressing away from them. Nihlus paused briefly, but said nothing in favor of bulling ahead. The aliens split before him like the Red Sea and the rest of the squad hurried to follow. He led them unerringly toward the bottom tier, stopping before an enormous wooden door on the same wall as the door to the docks. "This is the administrator's office," he announced, sending a look over his shoulder.

Shepard nodded and he pushed the doors open, striding in with the commander at his side. Sterile walls reached to the vaulted ceiling over eight meters above Shepard's head. A small coffee table and chairs stood in one corner, complementing the mid-sized desk in the middle of the room. Another ornate wooden door stood closed on the wall directly behind the desk. Each and every item in the office was both ostentatious and tasteful, in that way only possible by spending obscene amounts of money. Shepard could tell right away that this anteroom was designed to impress upon any visitors the wealth and power of the one who controlled it.

As the squad walked in, a human woman in a long pink dress looked up from the desk. "Greetings," she said cheerfully. "My name is Gianna Parasini, Administrator Anoleis' personal assistant. Is there something I can do for you?"

"We'd like to speak to the administrator," Shepard told her. "We have some questions for him."

"May I ask who you are?" she asked, still cheerfully welcoming.

"Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre," Nihlus answered before Shepard could. A flicker of surprise flashed over her face before she suppressed it expertly. Her gaze bounced between the Spectre and Shepard in obvious question, but both of them ignored it.

"Thank you," she chirped after a brief pause. "One moment please." She cued an intercom on her desk. "Mr. Anoleis?"

"What?" a male salarian's thoroughly unhappy voice came over the comm. He sounded rather aggrieved by the interruption.

"A Council Spectre and his cohort is asking to see you sir," Parasini replied, ignoring her boss' tone with the ease of long practice.

"Right," the salarian responded, sounding even more unhappy. "Fine, whatever. Send them in."

Parasini stood from the desk and strode briskly to the door at the rear of the room. The squad made to follow, but Shepard raised a hand. "Just me and Nihlus for now," he ordered quietly. "No point crowding him out; it's gonna be hard enough to get him to cooperate."

The squad nodded their assent, so Shepard and Nihlus rounded the desk and approached the door. Parasini pulled it open and waved them through with a shallow bow. Shepard nodded his thanks and moved through the portal. The door closed with a resounding boom nearly the second he and Nihlus were both through it.

The office itself was every bit as gaudy and overpriced as the anteroom had led Shepard to believe. Low shelves lined most of the walls, each decorated with an eclectic collection of various odds and ends, ranging from real, paper books to small, hideously complex machines that beeped and whirred quietly to themselves. Large plants broke up the shelves in regular intervals, somehow giving the frankly enormous office a claustrophobic air.

The real attention-getter of the office though was the administrator's gigantic wooden desk. It was big enough to land a shuttle on and, save for a single datapad, was clean enough for it too. Intricate carvings drew beautiful patterns in strong, smooth lines on nearly every surface of it. A low glimmer caught his eye with every motion, and Shepard was astounded to realize that every single design was inlaid with a thin band of gold that sparkled brilliantly in the light.

Behind the desk, a grey-white salarian in a smart, blue and black business suit sat, typing furiously into keyboard built directly into the desk. Holograms danced through the air above it, and the salarian's eyes bounced from screen to screen. Without looking away, he spoke. "You will excuse me if I don't stand up." The words rolled from him as a statement of fact. "I am a busy man. I have no time for whatever paranoid delusions you are attempting to validate."

Shepard scowled. He was going to love this guy, he could already tell. "We're looking for someone," he announced with a glare.

Anoleis ignored him completely.

Shepard's scowl deepened. "We'll waste a lot less of your time if you answer our questions," he said, a hint of tension creeping into his voice.

Anoleis continued to completely ignore him.

The commander growled quietly. "Hey! Jackass!" he barked. A burst of purple light shot from him and chipped a large gouge into the top of the fancy desk as the keyboard was torn from it.

Anoleis flinched back from the sudden explosion of splinters, then leveled a glare on the commander. "You have no authority here human," he announced calmly. "And you will be paying to repair my desk."

"Uh huh," Shepard said dismissively. "Right. Now, are you going to answer my questions?"

Anoleis sighed heavily. "Why are they always this stupid?" he muttered quietly with a beseeching glance to the ceiling. He looked back at Shepard. "You have no authority here, _human_," he emphasized the species' name pointedly. "I will not answer anything you have to say."

"But I do," Nihlus interjected calmly, one hand coming to rest on Shepard's shoulder. The commander blew out a noisy breath "And for the purposes of this conversation, you can assume any question from Commander Shepard here also comes from me."

Anoleis' eyes widened in surprise. "Shepard?" he muttered under his breath with a wary look at the commander, so quietly Shepard only just heard it. The spark of fear in his eyes disappeared as quickly as it had come, however, and an instant later, he was as arrogant as ever. The only sign of his discontent was the way his gaze never strayed far enough from the commander to lose sight of him.

"I will only cooperate as far as required by the Executive Board," he said a moment later, in a surly tone that successfully conveyed just how little he imagined that to be. "Noveria was founded specifically to curtail such efforts."

"An asari matriarch by the name of Benezia came through a few days ago," Shepard pressed quickly, before the administrator could re-center himself. "Where is she?"

Anoleis sent a sidelong glance at Nihlus, who nodded sharply. "Matriarch Benezia, a personal escort, and some cargo arrived a few days ago and immediately left for the Peak 15 research facility. They have not come back to Port Hanshan. Presumably, they are still there."

"What kind of cargo was she carrying?" Shepard asked.

"Haven't the slightest," Anoleis answered glibly. "It passed weapons screening. Beyond that is not our concern."

"Of course," Shepard muttered. He got the feeling the rest of this conversation would be about as informative. "Tell me about her escort."

"Asari commandos mostly," the administrator replied calmly. He refused to elaborate.

"And that did not cause any concerns?" Nihlus interjected with a questioning look.

Anoleis waved a hand dismissively. "They followed all our regulations, which is something you have failed spectacularly at, I might add. I had no reason to question it further."

Nihlus just shook his head with a sigh. He looked back to the salarian and spoke firmly. "We need to find her immediately. How do we get to the Peak 15 research station?"

"You don't," Anoleis said matter-of-factly. "Peak 15 is a private facility. Not even Spectres have the right to interfere there. Now, I have told you everything I am legally required to. You will get nothing further from me."

"Yea, that's not going to work," Shepard said dryly. Fucking paper-pushers, he thought to himself. They always have to get in the way. The commander walked up to the desk and leaned over it, planting his fists solidly into the wood. Anoleis did not so much as blink at his sudden proximity to the commander's faceless helmet. "You are going to tell us where it is."

"No," Anoleis said slowly, as if speaking to a child. "I am not."

"I don't think you understand," Shepard countered, his voice thick with cold fury. "I was not asking. You are _going_ to tell me where Peak 15 is and how to get there. The only question is how intact you will be afterwards."

To his credit, the administrator didn't even flinch at the overt threat. Shepard could see renewed flickers of nervousness in his over-sized eyes though. "I shouldn't have to keep repeating this. Peak 15 is a _private_ facility. You are not authorized to access it. And even if you were, the only way to reach it is via a surface route that has been cut off."

"And where is this surface route?" Shepard demanded.

"As I said, closed," Anoleis returned, annoyed. "The blizzard has shut down the road and garage access is forbidden. Do not make an issue of this."

"Administrator," Shepard bit out angrily. "You have two options. I can make an issue of it with you, or I can go make an issue of it with the door sealing the garage and anyone who tries to get in my way." Purple light flared around his clenched fists. "Your choice."

Anoleis glared at him, pure outrage on his face. He slapped a button on his desk and a hidden door slid open on one wall. Security guards, the whole troupe from the dock in fact, surged out of the new hole and surrounded the pair. A dozen assault rifles were pointed at them, but Shepard refused to look away from Anoleis. "Captain," the administrator spat hotly. "Arrest them."

The batarian captain turned a predatory grin on the pair in the middle of the room. "I told you to watch your step, Carnifex," he said with relish. "I'm going to enjoy this."

Shepard sighed and focused. Purple light burst from him in brilliant spears that slammed into each one of the guards like an out of control locomotive. The guards were thrown backwards helplessly, but their weapons remained where they were, held firmly in Shepard's mental grip. A thought brought them together into a large ball where, accompanied by the furious screams of twisting metal, they were crushed together into a useless lump of scrap that he let fall to the floor with a resounding thud.

He sent a look around the room to see everyone but Nihlus staring at him in abject shock. He ignored the brief rush of dizziness the psionic display had caused in favor of hammering the point home. Light lines of psionic energy licked across the air to the visible distress of the entire security force. "Look," he said firmly, turning his full attention onto Anoleis. "I-"

He was cut off by Nihlus, who had surged around him and grabbed the batarian captain into a strangle hold, pulling a pistol out of his hand in the process. "Don't," he commanded. His gaze swept around the others and the few with their backup weapons in hand dropped them awkwardly.

Shepard coughed, internally kicking himself for not noticing the other weapons, before resuming. "I'd prefer not to hurt anyone, but I _am_ getting to Peak 15. I won't lose any sleep if that means I have to go through you."

Anoleis shook himself out of his stupor and looked to the commander. Shepard could practically feel the partially-hidden fear lurking in his eyes. "I can't do that," he said with a note of pleading. "Saren has paid a great deal of money to ensure no unauthorized access to Peak 15 is allowed."

Shepard and Nihlus exchanged glances. "What does Saren have to do with this?" the commander demanded angrily.

Anoleis flinched subtly, enough so that Shepard wasn't even sure he'd seen it. "Saren is the primary backer of Binary Helix, the corporation that owns the Peak 15 facility," he offered immediately.

"What are they researching?" Nihlus asked, finally releasing the batarian from his hold. The Spectre stepped up beside Shepard and pinned the salarian with his stare.

"I do not know," Anoleis replied, calmer now that the air of imminent violence had dissipated. "What our clients do in their labs is none of our concern. I would imagine they are working on a weapon of some kind, given Saren's interests," he offered quickly when Shepard's fists tightened audibly.

"That just makes it even more important that we get there," Shepard said firmly. "Grant us access to Peak 15."

Anoleis' eyes darted from the commander to Nihlus, then to the guards still laid out on the floor. His mouth twisted sharply into strange patterns. "Fine," he said quietly after several seconds of contemplation. He slumped in place, defeat in every line of his body. He popped open a drawer of his desk and fished out a small card before throwing it onto the desk between Shepard's hands. "This will grant you access to the garage, directly across the plaza from my office. Follow the signs from there."

Shepard picked it up and nodded to the administrator. "Thanks," he said, scooping up the card. He turned and fell in behind Nihlus as the pair left the room. Right as the door was closing behind him, a coarse batarian voice, just loud enough to be heard, drifted to his ears.

"By all that is holy," it said in a tone of both shock and relief. "The rumors are true..."

* * *

The walk from Anoleis' office to the garage, thankfully, passed without incident, if one discounted the stares and the obviously hastily increased presence of nervous security personnel along the route. Gee, why ever would they do that? Shepard snorted quietly and pushed the idle thought away. At least they took their jobs seriously. His thoughts drifted instead to what lay ahead.

He wasn't sure how much of Anoleis' spiel about the roads was correct and how much was bureaucratic horseshit meant to deter them, but if there was any truth to it, the trip to Peak 15 was not going to be a fun one. The TIV was a hover vehicle at least, so there was no chance of being stranded in the snow. That wasn't going to help with the other myriad issues such snowfall brings with it though. With any luck, all they'd need is the snow to be light enough to leave the roads visible and they could make it alright, but he had learned a long time ago to never rely on luck.

His musings were interrupted a moment later by his arrival at the garage entrance. A pair of turian security guards holding assault rifles stood between him and the door itself. One of the pair stepped forward as the squad approached and his eyes darted wildly among the squad. Shepard was amused to note that he was eying all of the plasma weapons like he would a hissing cobra. "Surface Access is closed," he said. The firmness of his tone was somewhat lessened by the trill of nervousness threaded through it. "Administrator Anoleis' orders."

Shepard flashed the card Anoleis had given him. "We've got a pass."

Relief flashed through both guards' eyes. They stepped aside and waved the squad on. "Slide it over the reader," the leader said, gesturing at a small black box aside the door. "Then the elevator will take you up to the garage."

"Thanks," Shepard grunted, stepping past the pair and following their instructions. The door slid open to reveal a mid-sized cargo elevator with another door on the far end. The squad followed him into the box and he hit a button along the wall. The door behind them slid closed and the elevator rose with a jerk. Several seconds of idle silence passed before the elevator arrived at its destination with a gentle chime. The door to the rear of the elevator slid smoothly open and the group moved out into the room beyond.

The garage was an enormous, rectangular cavern. There was really no other way to describe it. It was easily thirty meters deep, twenty meters tall, and twice that wide, with a yawning opening that took up the entirety of the wall directly across from the elevator's exit. A raised platform ran along the wall on each side of the cavern, broken periodically by half a dozen hydraulic lifts on each side that were meant to hoist the vehicles up for repairs or storage. Underneath each lift was an automated loader that could shift any of the large boxes of freight piled toward the rear of the room aboard the wheeled haulers that populated the lifts. Only five of the lifts were currently occupied, the other vehicles presumably out delivering cargo to the research bases, and of those, only one was on the floor. Overhead, a pair of mobile cranes hung from complex, sturdy scaffolding, waiting to hoist any new cargo into place to await shipping.

A small walkway started from the elevator doors and moved straight toward the enormous exit, dividing the piles of cargo on either side in half. The cargo only took up the rear third of the room however; the remaining space was dedicated to the haulers and letting them load out of the bitter cold. The telltale shimmering blue of a mass effect barrier stretched across the massive opening and kept the worst of the cold out, though occasional flakes of snow seeped through the permeable shield to melt and wet the floor.

The squad moved along the walkway and in a matter of seconds emerged out into the clear space. No sooner had the last person cleared the opening than the ambush was sprung. A handful of cargo crates on either side burst open, disgorging half a dozen geth hoppers throughout the neatly stacked containers. More geth stood abruptly from their hiding places behind the railings of the repair platforms, both troopers and the slimmer build and lack of weapons that marked mystics. Even the cavernous opening was part of the geth ambush, disgorging a pair of destroyers, three mystics, and a wave of troopers.

Shepard's eyes went wide and he reacted purely on instinct. A wave of psionic energy rippled out from him, swiftly forming a protective telekinetic field around the squad. Energy lashed through the air, batting aside the waves of incoming projectiles before they could do any damage to the squad. Behind him, he could hear the telltale roar of plasma weapons charging up as the few precious seconds he bought them gave the squad a chance to recover.

Rex and Urdnot bounded past him, charging head-on toward the geth at the entrance. "Garrus! Support the front!" he snapped, before forcibly dismissing the pair from his mind. "Nihlus, Ashley, get top left! Tali, Legion, top right! I'm on the hoppers!"

Shouts of assent rang out and the squad scattered. Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard saw Nihlus slap his belt and erupt in the blue glow of an active mass effect field. The Spectre took a single bounding leap that saw him land atop his assigned platform, riot shield already deployed. Ashley was only a half second behind him, her grappling hook pulling her up and onto the platform right behind him. Nihlus covered her assent easily, absorbing the trooper's fire on his shield and forcing the single mystic on the platform to remain in cover with surprisingly accurate fire from his alloy cannon.

His shield died nearly the same instant the gunnery chief arrived however, and both he and Ashley were forced to drop into cover behind the nearby truck. Ashley ripped a smoke grenade off her belt and dropped it at her feet. In a matter of seconds, the entire rear half of the platform was clouded in choking smoke, and thanks to the lack of circulation, it wasn't going anywhere soon. A beat later, plasma and vahlenite flechettes roared out of the smoke in deadly streaks.

The nearest geth trooper was torn apart by the vicious shards, armor and synthetic muscle simply unable to handle the raw power of an alloy cannon's barrage. The plasma was sent at a more distant target, and to far less effect. The handful of green bolts slammed into a hastily raised biotic barrier mere inches from the platform's mystic. The barrier flared and died, but it served its purpose. The geth was unscathed.

The three surviving troopers immediately began firing in systematic patterns into the smoke, searching for their wayward foes, while the mystic sent a flurry of weak biotic bursts into the cloud that exploded in mid-air. These bursts were obviously not dangerous, but in a matter of seconds, they had dispersed the smoke enough to see through it. Ashley cursed loudly and threw herself behind cover the instant she realized what was happening.

Nihlus had other ideas though. The turian's riot shield had recharged, and he seized the opportunity for a surprise blitzkrieg. With the aid of his mass effect module, he flung himself up into the air, then he dialed the module in the opposite direction and landed heavily shield first on an unsuspecting trooper.

The standard geth platform was well-designed and could serve ably in a wide variety of tasks. Catching a thousand kilograms of avian fury is not one of them. The riot shield flared and died under the force, but not before it crushed the geth underneath Nihlus' increased weight. The other troops immediately turned and peppered him with bullets, but his armor proved sufficient to the challenge and he made it to safety, crouched behind a toolbox, unharmed.

As soon as the troopers turned to confront the Spectre, Ashley was on the move. She slid around the machinery she hid behind and darted forward, peppering the mystic with a constant barrage of plasma. It flicked its hands toward her and a series of biotic eruptions burst from the ground in a charge straight at her. The shockwave hit her mid-stride, before she'd even had time to react and bodily threw her up and over the ledge. She hit the ground with a startled exclamation and struggled to regain her breath. She returned to her senses just in time to see the mystic leaning over the railing and throwing another round of biotics at her. She rolled away just in time, and the ground where she had lain buckled upwards into a sharp cone.

The sudden surge from the floor threw her a short distance through the air and smacked her into the leading edge of the crates. She fell to the floor solidly and immediately swung the plasma rifle in her hand back toward the mystic. Plasma burst out and stitched burning holes through the railing. One of her shots must have been lucky and struck some kind of fuel canister that went up in a blinding fireball, echoed a moment later by an explosion near the entrance.

Burning liquid rained down on a large portion of the garage and completely consumed over a third of the repair platform. All three of the surviving geth on the platform were consumed by the flames, the staccato pops of their muscles melting and armor warping echoed loudly through the space. Titan Armor's design proved to carry the day yet again however, and Nihlus walked through the heart of the firestorm completely unscathed.

On the other side, Tali and Legion had attacked their platform in similar ways. There was one major difference though. Both quarian and geth had cloaking modules installed, and the heretic geth obviously had no idea how to deal with it. Legion had gone directly for the mystic while cloaked and, right underneath the noses of five of his fellows, filled the biotic robot with plasma in an explosion of green that rendered its entire torso little more than glowing, molten slag.

The troopers immediately whirled with weapons ready, but by then, he was already gone. Then the rearmost trooper exploded, torn apart by a storm of vahlenite fury. The troopers turned around just in time to see the quarian responsible shimmer and disappear. Bullets raced through the space she had occupied in a furious storm, but struck nothing. She had vanished instantly, as if she were a ghost.

A beat later, an overcharged overload exploded in the middle of two of the troopers, shorting out their shields and, for a brief instant, freezing the platforms. Both were utterly destroyed in the next instant by a volley of bright green devastation. Molten shards of metal were thrown through the air by the force of the blasts, gouging small, flaming holes in the surrounding walls. The ruined corpses collapsed, their mostly-intact legs unable to handle the sudden shift in weight without their guiding intelligence.

Then the fuel tank erupted on the far side of the room. The platform was thrown into stark relief by the blinding surge of light and the two surviving troopers started chittering rapidly. Tali seized on the opportunity and barrelled into one of them with a shout. Her cloak fell with a shimmer as the geth was bodily lifted off the ground by her charge. Her alloy cannon planted itself into its chest and roared mindless bloodlust, belching forth the storm of metal that spelled the death of its chosen victim. The trooper's torso disintegrated, leaving only a pile of shorn limbs to collapse to the metal grating around its executioner. Its partner turned to Tali before she had even finished firing, but Legion denied its efforts.

Plasma lanced toward the trooper with explosive fury, piercing the geth's shields and slamming into the lower half of its head. The flashlight exploded in a flurry of sparks, even as the bottom of its face disintegrated. The bolt of plasma carried on and hit its chest with primordial fury, blowing it apart in a shower of white fluid. Tali nodded at Legion, whose cloak faded with a faint shimmer, and the pair turned their attention to the battle at the entrance.

Up front, Rex and Urdnot had blitzed straight into the middle of the attacking geth. Not even a full step past Shepard, the krogan had flared with biotic light and catapulted forward in a biotic charge. The biotic surge shot right in between both destroyers and nailed the middle mystic with tremendous force. The mystic's shields died in a flutter of green sparks before the platform was launched backwards, through the atmospheric barrier, where it vanished into a snowdrift.

Rex followed in the krogan's wake, spitting plasmic death at both destroyers. The massive geth platforms ignored the incoming fire, allowing it to splash against their barriers. The shields flickered wildly under the barrage, but held strong long enough for the destroyers to close. Both destroyers fired their shotguns the instant they were in range. Each of the weapons spat out a trio of destructive shards with a crackling roar that crossed the intervening space in an instant.

They collided with Rex's own kinetic barrier with an explosive crackle. Arcs of electricity danced between each shard, flash heating the very air around it to plasma. The dog's shields flared, only just proving able to withstand the attack. In response, Rex threw himself in a powerful leap at the nearest destroyer. All five hundred kilograms of angry cyberdog hit the robot directly in the chest.

The large geth toppled over, unable to compensate for the added weight. Rex's jaws lashed out with crushing force over the destroyer's head, and as they hit the ground he twisted and yanked, tearing off the destroyer's head in a shower of white gore. He spat out the broken remnants of his victim's head, along with another bolt of plasma, directly into its chest. The plasma seared through the armor and turned the complex machinery inside into ruined slag.

An instant later, the second destroyer was on him. The barrel of its gun slammed into Rex's side and erupted in sparking fury. The dog yipped frantically as the air boiled around it, beneath his shield. The sizzling roar of electric discharge filled the air as his armor cracked and melted under the searing assault. He threw himself away from the surviving destroyer, just in time to avoid its second round that even then scraped loudly against his upper back.

He steadied himself and swung to face his opponent. The plasma cannon in his throat roared to life. Bolt after green-white bolt filled the air, slamming into the destroyer's shields with an angry roar. The geth's barriers shuddered and died in mere moments, leaving it vulnerable to the continued barrage. The rain of plasma destroyed the destroyer in a matter of seconds, tearing enormous holes in the synthetic's armor then reaching in and slagging the delicate machinery beneath. Rex chuffed as the destroyer collapsed into a smoking ruin, the slow stream of smoke leaking from his jaws only making the image all the more threatening.

Past the SHIV, Urdnot Wrex was having the time of his life. His biotic charge had placed him directly in the middle of the geth formation and he relished in the chance to cut loose. One hand held up his riot shield, blocking incoming fire from that side, while a gesture sent a biotic warp slamming into the mystic on the other. The chaotically shifting mass effect fields shredded its torso with ease, filling the air with the ear-piercing screech of tortured metal. The deep rents erupted in a geyser of conductive fluid, practically painting its allies an eye-searing white.

He smoothly shifted the biotic mnemonic into sweeping, one-handed suppressive fire from his heavy plasma. The three troopers on that side scattered instantly, a high pitched chittering echoing throughout the room. "Cry some more!" the krogan bellowed mightily.

A beat later, his shield gave out in a flash of blue-white light. Bloodlust filled his eyes as he brought his now free hand to his gun and trained it on the last mystic. Plasma roared from the weapon in an unstoppable wave, the crackling thunder of its discharge drowning out nearly all other sound.

The mystic waved its arms and constructed a barrier just in time, stopping the first wave in its tracks. The second surge of plasma obliterated it, but that alone bought time enough for the geth to skitter out of the line of fire. Wrex tried to track its movement, but the troopers surged onto the offensive then. Bullets pinged off his armor in rapid succession, swiftly chipping away at even the unbelievably strong surface of Titan armor.

A quick motion of his shoulders activated his biotics, encasing him in a powerful repulsive mass effect field that stopped the projectiles inches away from the surface of his armor. A bloodthirsty grin spread across his lips and he activated his missile rack. A veritable rain of small, deadly missiles launched from his shoulders in a frenetic rush, slamming into and around all three troopers and the mystic on that side of him with explosive power.

The entrance to the garage erupted with fire and fury within the same heartbeat as one of the repair platforms within went up in equally brilliant flames. Small pieces of three geth platforms were visible through the fire and smoke, while a single platform, wreathed in a blue-white glow, could be seen struggling weakly against the flames that had already wholly consumed its legs. Wrex began laughing madly and whirled on the three troopers behind him, steadfastly taking their unceasing barrage.

A gesture saw explosive biotic charges burst out of the ground in a rush, barreling through the geth troopers and throwing them wildly through the air. The sizzling crack of a plasma sniper filled the air in a rapid, three round burst. When the troopers hit the ground, they collapsed bonelessly, bereft of everything above the sternum.

Wrex shot a glance and a nod at Garrus further back in the garage and was blindsided by the first mystic he had downed. The biotic push threw him off his feet and catapulted him head first into the wall with a resounding boom, leaving the krogan to blink the stars out of his eyes. The mystic threw itself out of the snow with a chitter, wholly wreathed in brilliant blue light. It pointed one hand at Wrex, but was forced to break off as fire from both Garrus and Rex filled the air around it.

The geth chittered madly and waved a hand. A directed wave of force shot from it, scooping up Rex and Garrus along the way and slamming them both into the crates at the rear of the room. The mystic turned its attention back to Wrex, but that brief respite had been all the krogan had needed to recover.

He bellowed a challenge and lit up with the mass effect. A thousand kilograms of reptilian fury smacked head first against a tenth of that in robotic ingenuity. Biotics flared, clashed and died in a chaotic maelstrom that whipped the very air around them into a frenzy. The surge of fresh air drove the flames in the opening even higher and the thick metal floor underneath it began to warp and bubble from the overwhelming heat. Blow after blow was exchanged between geth and krogan, an intricate dance conducted more mentally than physically, each trying to counter the other's biotics for that brief fraction of a second needed to secure victory.

Unfortunately for the geth, Wrex wasn't alone. A bolt of searing plasma burst from the intact repair platform, fired by the only sensible geth present, and slammed into the mystic's barrier from behind before the chaotically swirling energies threw it away. It was enough though, for in that brief fraction of a second, the geth's biotics faltered. Wrex surged into the miniscule opening and a thick, three-fingered fist wreathed in biotic energy slammed into and through the mystic's chest, bursting out of its back in an explosion of white gore and wild sparks. The mystic instantly went limp and the swirling dome of biotic energy faded. The krogan snorted loudly and tossed the geth's corpse aside, roaring his triumph to the sky.

Shepard only distantly noted all of those goings on however, as he was far more occupied by the rapidly bouncing hoppers wholly obsessed with killing him. He had taken to the air the instant the squad split up, ducking and weaving frantically as he had on Feros while his psionics lashed out with overwhelming force. The hoppers had initially attempted to split up, two to prey on his squad below while the rest kept him occupied, but he had quickly shown them the foolishness of such notions. Both were torn asunder in powerful psionic displays nearly the instant they turned their attention away from Shepard.

But just as they could not look away from him, neither could he from they, and there were a lot more of them. Piercing sniper rounds blazed through the air from the hoppers in a nearly constant stream. As soon as one landed, it immediately opened fire on him before leaping away, inches ahead of his psionic grasp. It was infuriating.

He growled quietly and clapped his hands together, even as he rolled away from the latest barrage. The action served as a focusing aid that helped him to send out a weak pulse of force in every direction. It wasn't anywhere near enough to do real damage, but the tactic was proven successful nonetheless when the gentle nudge bumped the bouncing hoppers off-course. One of the aggravating robots smacked off the side of the support pillar it had been aiming for and went spiraling off through the air.

Shepard grinned savagely. Finally, a trajectory slow enough that he could predict it. His psionics shot out in a rush, grabbed the synthetic by its ankles and whipped it head first into the thick metal wall with a resounding boom. The wall dented slightly from the impact, and the geth's torso burst like a rotten banana. White fluid flew out in a thick spray, painting the grey wall a blinding white. He felt a rush of satisfaction at the sight before a sudden flurry of incoming fire alerted him to the fact that the other three had recovered. He was forced to release the pulped corpse and focus back on dodging.

The dance resumed, but this time, it was noticeably easier. Gaps formed in their barrage, brief instants where all three of the hoppers were in the air. Perfect.

Frantic dodging followed for several long seconds, but then another lull hit and he struck. His eyes locked onto his victim, tracking its trajectory and estimating its destination in the slim opening he was given. An overly large wave of psionic force burst forth from him as soon as he finished, several times wider than the normal psionic lance to account for any tracking mistakes.

The psionic blast hit at nearly the same instant the geth did, forcing it into the wall with the force of a speeding train. It smacked into the wall with a satisfying crunch and the follow-up bolt of plasma pierced its armor and tore a gaping, charred hole through its chest, leaving the hopper to bounce off the wall and tumble limply to the ground so far below. The corpse hit the ground right as the whole garage seemed to go up in flames, two separate and massive plumes of fire erupting within the same breath, sending thick, choking smoke up into the rafters.

"Wonderful," Shepard groused, realizing that the swiftly thickening smoke was only going to make his job harder. Already, the grey-white hoppers had vanished from view into the haze. He sighed and let himself descend out of the thick smog. There was no point staying up there, he'd never find the things. Best to wait below and catch them when they descended.

Of course, both of the hoppers seemed to have had the same thought. The instant the smoke thinned around him, he was once more dancing away from a shower of sniper rounds. He cursed vehemently under his breath and returned to the effort. The volume of fire was greatly lessened, but the hoppers had learned their lesson. They had stopped jumping, preferring instead to skitter along the walls impossibly quickly and rain fire on him in completely random intervals.

The abrupt shift in tactics nearly proved enough to overcome him, as their shots got closer and closer to scoring a telling blow against him. "Fuck!" he cried, as one glanced off his bicep, leaving a thick crack in the armor. He let the bullet's momentum spin him around to dodge another shot before a third bounced off the side of the plate over his kneecap. Adrenaline surged anew through him, fueled by the close call, helping him just barely dodge the next two shots.

Then a rain of plasma slammed into one of the stupid fucking spider things as Ashley took to the air to help clean up. The sight of the hopper being torn into small chunks by the angry barrage warmed Shepard's heart something fierce. He turned his attention to the sole remaining hopper, only to find that in the small window of distraction, the geth had flung itself straight at him, firing all the way.

The first bullet pinged off the side of his helmet with a brain-rattling crack. His instinctive flinch away, rotating him nearly 90 degrees from vertical, saved his life. The next half-dozen bullets flew directly through the space his head had once occupied. A beat later, the geth platform itself slammed into him, throwing both of them tumbling chaotically through the air. The geth latched onto his legs and pointed the gun in its head at him, but before it could fire, a sharp burst of purple light shot from Shepard and tore its head off with a squeal of tormented metal. Another psi lance slammed through one of its arms and into its chest, forcing a geyser of white goo and shattered electronics to come flying out of the opposite side. He kicked the corpse off his feet and fired his archangel pack just in time to stop himself from slamming into the wall.

He let out a sigh of relief and flew down to the center of the room before gently setting down. The biotic lightshow at the entrance died as he touched down and Wrex's echoing roar could be felt through the floor, even from where he stood. His eyes cast about for any more threats, but all he could see was burning wreckage and empty space. He blew out a breath of relief. "Looks clear," he announced at length, while the squad formed up around him. "Anyone hurt?"

A chorus of negatives answered him, and he nodded to himself. "Good." A sharp sound from behind him sent the whole squad whirling around, weapons raised. Just in time to watch the elevator doors slide open and disgorge a cadre of security guards led by everyone's favorite batarian. The group charged up the walkway with weapons drawn, and, as one, they slid to a stop mere feet past the end of the walkway. A ripple of shock and awe spread through the entire group as they took in the devastation and the incredibly potent plasma weapons aimed directly at them.

Shepard waved for his squad to stow their weapons and relaxed himself, swinging his plasma rifle onto his back. He looked at the batarian captain and asked, perfectly deadpan, "Were you aware that you had a geth infestation?"

The captain gaped stupidly at him for a long second before the burning repair platform buckled under its own weight and fell to the floor with an earthshaking crash. He swallowed heavily. "No," he said at length. "I was not."

Shepard nodded calmly and turned around, dismissing the security forces entirely. They weren't going to try anything now. He opened a comm line to the _Normandy_. "EDI, we need transport. Send Mako through."

"Yes Commander," EDI replied immediately. Shepard sent her the coordinates and images for a portal, and she confirmed its receipt by saying, "TIV is en route."

As soon as the AI finished speaking, a ring of purple light tore open in one of the few undamaged spaces of the garage. A clatter rang from behind Shepard, the telltale sound of weapons dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers. His brow furrowed for a moment, but then he realized the cause. The security guards were aliens who had never really seen psionics before, let alone wormholes. Seeing such casual violation of space-time must have been something of a shock. He snuck a look over his shoulder to see the batarian captain looking almost ill and grinned widely.

The commander turned his attention forward again, just in time to see the _Normandy_'s Transport Infantry Vehicle, or TIV, glide smoothly through the hole in space, seamlessly making the transition from the ship to the garage in only a few seconds. The portal swiftly sealed behind it as the drone lightly settled on the ground.

At six meters long and three tall and wide, the TIV made for an imposing sight. Smooth curves defined the almost teardrop shape of its frame, with the rear half being a semi-circular cylinder before shallowly narrowing as it drew closer to the front, into a blunt tip approximately half the size of the rear. Gently glowing tracery, reminiscent of the green lines flickering through every set of titan armor, highlighted the curves of the vehicle in graceful swirls. These lines also served another useful purpose. They cleanly, and stealthily, directed the eye away from the pair of linked heavy plasmas that sat perched atop the transport, at the lip of the incline, where it could rotate freely and fire in all directions around the vehicle.

The rear of the TIV was taken up by a circular hatch that folded open as soon as it set down, revealing two rows of benches that ran the length of its cylindrical portion and a pair of chairs further in, for manual control of the turret and movement. "All aboard," Shepard ordered, waving the squad ahead of them. "Garrus, grab the turret seat."

"On it Commander," the turian replied smoothly as he vanished into the transport. The rest of the squad was right on his heels, though Shepard had to suppress a laugh as Wrex awkwardly clambered through a hatch obviously not built to account for his hump.

The commander sent a look over at the batarian, who had edged away from him surreptitiously, along with the rest of the security force. "Sorry about the damage," he said with a negligent wave of his hand.

The captain scowled fiercely at him. "Just do whatever it is you came for and get off my planet already," he growled. "If the port survives your exit, I'll count myself lucky."

Shepard shrugged. "Always been my goal," he admitted easily before turning back to the TIV. He clambered through the hatch and carefully made his way through the cramped confines to settle into the driver's seat. The hatch slid smoothly closed and the TIV lifted off the ground with a gentle hum. "How about letting me drive, Mako?" the commander asked.

"Yes Commander Shepard," a synthesized voice came from the control console before him. A steering wheel slid out of its storage space and the screens around him flared to life. "Manual control enabled."

Shepard grabbed the wheel and set his foot on the pedals with a grin. The transport glided smoothly for the exit a second later, drifting over the broken and still-burning remains of the geth ambush and out onto the snow. Globs of white whipped wildly through the air and it was a struggle to see more than a dozen meters through the thick, blinding snow. Shepard swore under his breath, a sentiment echoed by the turian at his side. Of course it couldn't be easy. Why would that change now?


	19. Forbidden Research

**Chapter 18: Forbidden Research**

Several hours after the squad had departed Port Hanshan, the Peak 15 research facility burst out of the blinding snow. A solid, gunmetal grey wall that stretched across the entire ten feet of Shepard's visible range. His eyes went wide and he slammed on the brakes. The transport bucked from the sudden deceleration and slammed to a stop mere inches from the solid steel walls. Momentum threw the passengers against their restraints and muffled cries filled the vehicle's cramped interior.

"What the hell was that?" Wrex demanded angrily. Shepard could hear the krogan forcing himself back into his seat, to Ashley's audible relief. Groans and rustling sounded from behind him as the rest of the squad followed suit.

"Sorry," he threw out in apology. "I've got no visibility out here and almost hit a wall. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure we've found it."

"About time," Ashley moaned in relief. "I'm going stir-crazy in here."

"Me too," Tali agreed heartily.

"Yea," Shepard muttered absently, most of his attention focused on the external camera feeds. "Garrus, keep an eye out for the door to this place. It's gotta be around here somewhere."

"Way ahead of you," the turian replied smoothly, not looking away from the turret controls and the monitors it contained. "The snow isn't helping any though. I can't se- wait," he cut himself off abruptly. "I can see some flickers of color out to the left. Looks like it might be a fire."

Shepard frowned. That was not an encouraging sign. Nonetheless, he guided the TIV along the facility's wall toward the light. The transport slid smoothly over the snow, following the graceful, rounded curves of the building toward whatever the turian had seen. A few seconds later, even Shepard's inferior eyes could make out the low, flickering orange light that the turian must have seen.

"It's definitely a fire," Garrus said slowly. He kept examining the light as the TIV crept ever closer, then swore loudly. "Damn." He turned to the commander. "It's the front door. Someone drove one of the haulers from Hanshan into it and collapsed the entrance. There's no way in."

"Fuck," Shepard swore under his breath. He swung the TIV closer to see for himself. Garrus had indeed been correct. The entrance, what had once been an atmospherically sealed garage door was now nothing more than a twisted ruin of brightly burning fuel, twisted metal, and fallen rubble, complete with the rear half of a wheeled cargo hauler sticking out, that completely closed off access to the interior. He shook his head. "Somebody didn't want us getting in."

"Hmm," Nihlus said from right beside his ear. The commander flinched away in surprise and shot an aggrieved look at the turian who had so readily invaded his personal space.

"Christ Nihlus," he whined, one hand over his rapidly beating heart. "A little warning next time?"

"I will consider it," Nihlus said noncommittally with a sly glance at Shepard. The commander scowled at him, but let it go. Now wasn't the time. Nihlus turned back to the viewscreens and cocked his head. "What is the plan now?"

"Simple," Shepard answered glibly. "Someone doesn't want us in there. That just makes me want to get in even more. So we will." Nihlus shot him an inscrutable look that he ignored easily. He stood from the driver's seat, forcing the Spectre to take a step back, and turned to face the squad. He slapped the hatch release in the same motion, and the rear wall of the transport cracked open smoothly. Wind and snow blitzed into the opening, sweeping through the cramped space even as Shepard spoke. "Everybody out. We're getting in there, and we won't have room for Mako."

The squad grudgingly complied, leaving the calm, warm interior of the transport for the bitter cold and biting winds of Noveria's mountains. As Shepard stepped out, he turned to the transport and addressed it directly. "Get yourself back aboard the _Normandy_, Mako," he ordered quickly. "We'll take it from here."

"Yes Commander," its heavily synthesized voice answered. A few seconds later, a small portal tore itself open in the shelter of the TIV's interior. It opened far slower than most portals however, giving the transport more than enough time to glide forward. The growing portal emerged from its confines like it was giving birth, before unfolding completely into a stable portal despite the blizzard roaring around it. The transport backed through the opening before it sealed itself closed again, leaving the squad alone and on foot.

"I hope you have a plan, Commander," the only other human on the squad said quietly. "I'd really prefer not to freeze to death."

"Relax Ashley," he replied. "We've got at least an hour before that's an issue. We'll be in long before that."

"How do you intend to do that?" Nihlus wondered.

Shepard felt his lips twitch into a feral grin. "You'll see." He waved Wrex forward. "Urdnot, follow my lead."

The krogan grunted assent, so Shepard turned his attention to the pile of rubble. He would never be able to shift the whole thing, even with Wrex's help. It was just too much, and the roof above it was liable to collapse if he tried. He didn't need to shift all of it though, just enough to get everyone through to the other side.

Streamers of purple light shot from the commander's upraised hands and latched onto pieces of rubble above the hauler like massive, mechanical hands. The psionic construct copied the motions of his arms perfectly, pulling and twisting at the rubble. Wrex caught on immediately and biotic pulls hit each piece Shepard grabbed, lending the mass effect to the commander's efforts and speeding them immensely.

Piece by piece, the pile of rubble was rearranged, until, several minutes later, a small hole had been opened all the way through. Shepard released his psionics with a heavy sigh of relief and a wave of dizziness. "Let's go," he ordered as he climbed up atop the wrecked hauler and waved the squad to follow..

"Err," Garrus began hesitantly. "Are you sure that's safe?"

"Safer than freezing out here," Shepard answered with a shrug. "Now c'mon. We've got an asari matriarch to bag."

The turian exchanged a cautious glance with Tali, who jerked her gun in an 'after you' gesture. His mandibles flared, but he climbed the rubble anyway. At the top, he turned to Shepard and said in a nervous voice, "Just remember, if this thing collapses on me, I'm currently winning in the sims."

Shepard mock-scowled at the turian. "Get in there you big baby," he barked, shoving the turian at the hole. "We're right behind you."

Garrus nodded a sober acknowledgement and ducked into the hole, only seconds ahead of the rest of the squad. Shepard waited until last, his gaze sweeping over the area, searching for threats. Someone had deliberately collapsed this door. He wanted to know why. And he was sure he wasn't going to like the answer.

* * *

Loud scrabbling could be heard as Garrus fully emerged from the tunnel and climbed down the inside edge of the rubble pile. A beat passed in silence, then the turian's voice came over the squad's comm in an equal mix of shock and apprehension. "By the spirits..."

"What?" Shepard responded immediately. He had never heard that kind of tone from the former detective before. "What's going on?"

"You need to see this for yourself, Shepard," Tali's voice answered him, sounding just as shocked as Garrus.

"Because that isn't ominous at all," Shepard muttered under his breath. The commander began crowding against Wrex's back, silently willing the krogan to go faster. Wrex grumbled at him, but complied. He finally squeezed out of the opening several eternally long seconds later and the commander followed him out of the short tunnel. Shepard found himself awkwardly balancing on loose concrete slabs atop the rubble pile, but at least he was inside the building. He took one look around the interior, let out a low whistle and said, "Holy shit."

The large room, a smaller version of the same basic design as Port Hanshan's garage, had been completely destroyed. Both side platforms had collapsed into useless piles of metal. Pieces of the support structure still stood in place though, massive steel beams that ended in jagged tears where they had once been attached to the broken platforms. A single hauler had been flipped onto its side in the middle of the room. Only one of the vehicle's three axles remained attached to it, and that only by a single bolt. Several crates were scattered randomly throughout the room, as if some god had picked up the entire garage and shaken it like a snowglobe. The impression was only reinforced when Shepard realized he couldn't see a single crate that was still intact.

The general devastation, while cause for concern, was not the true reason for the fearful tension that hung thick over the squad though. No, that was caused by the corpses of innumerable geth and half a dozen krogan strewn throughout the wreckage. White and yellow blood flowed in thick rivers through the room, slowly seeping into the drainage holes underneath the collapsed platforms. Yet there wasn't a single sign of whatever had attacked. Shepard suppressed a shiver of apprehension. Whoever had done this was very good.

On top of that, several of the dead geth, and even one of the krogan, had suffered incredibly strange wounds. Metal and flesh had seemingly sloughed off their frames, running in liquid streams that then re-solidified later. The strangest part though, was that despite having melted, none of them had suffered so much as a single burn. It was like nothing Shepard had ever seen before.

"What the hell happened here?" he wondered aloud, directing the question to Garrus.

The former detective, already down among the corpses, looked up from one of the melted geth and glanced at Shepard. "I've never seen wounds like this before," he admitted in a frustrated tone. He shot a disgusted look at the half-melted krogan and continued. "I do know one thing though. Whoever did it is one sick son of a bitch."

Shepard nodded his agreement. That must have been a painful death.

Wrex hopped off the rubble pile without a word and hit the floor with a tremendous crash. He strode unhurriedly over to the half-melted krogan corpse and crouched down beside it. He rolled the body around and peered intently at it. "It almost looks a Thresher's handiwork," he announced matter-of-factly.

"A _Thresher Maw_?!" Tali yelped in alarm. Her alloy cannon flew up to her shoulder and she backed up against the wrecked hauler. The shotgun darted around randomly, as if she expected one of the enormous, subterranean predators to come bursting out of the ground.

"Relax," Wrex growled in reprimand. "There's no holes. And a Maw old enough to do this wouldn't fit in here anyway."

"Oh," Tali said. Her tone and body language screamed mortification. "Right. Of course. I knew that."

"Uh huh," Wrex grunted skeptically, not looking away from his inspection of the corpse.

"I did!" she insisted, stomping one foot angrily.

"Whatever you say, princess," Wrex rumbled, letting the corpse go and rising to his feet. Snickering could be heard coming from both Ashley and Rex.

Tali blew out an explosive breath, ignoring Shepard as he walked up beside her. She made to respond, but his hand on her shoulder pulled her up short.

"Relax," he said kindly when she glanced at him. "I was halfway to joining you anyway." The quarian sputtered embarrassedly, but quieted. Shepard squeezed her shoulder comfortingly and let her go before turning to Wrex. "What did you mean?"

Wrex toed the corpse at his feet. "This idiot died from a powerful acid. Looks the same for the geth. And then there's this." He kicked the corpse and sent it tumbling for a few feet. Then the krogan pointed to a collection of deep, narrow pits in the concrete floor that formed a near-perfect splash pattern. "The only acid I've ever seen able to do anywhere close to this kind of damage is adult Maw spit."

"What is Thresher Maw acid doing here?" Nihlus wondered aloud. "And who did this? Benezia?"

"Could be," Garrus answered doubtfully. The former detective gave up on his examination of the corpses and stood up. "But there's no signs of biotic damage on any of these. If this was asari handiwork, it would be there. No," he said confidently. "This was something else. If I had found this on the Citadel, I'd suspect a gang of krogan, or maybe vorcha, that got their hands on a new toy and wanted to test it out. As it is, I'm not sure."

"Great," Ashley said with heavy sarcasm. "So we've got another group in here now, and these ones are psychopaths armed with fuck-off acid." She turned a gimlet stare at Shepard. "Do all your missions get this fucked up, Commander?"

"Just about," he agreed brightly. "Stick around long enough and you'll get used to it." He waited a beat. "Or come down with the galaxy's worst case of PTSD. We'll find out in another couple months."

Wrex and Garrus laughed, and even Nihlus chuckled briefly, while Ashley gave him a one-fingered salute. He laughed it off, relieved that the tension that had settled over the group had been broken, for a few brief moments at least.

"Alright," he said a moment later, grabbing everyone's attention. "This is unexpected, but it doesn't change the mission." He pointed to a door set in the rear wall of the garage that looked surprisingly intact. "Door's over there. Urdnot and Rex on point. Let's move people."

The squad fell into formation behind the pointmen as they made their way carefully to the door. Nervous tension hung thick in the air. Even Shepard was feeling it, that strange dichotomy of dread and anticipation that could only come from knowing mortal combat was imminent. His plasma sniper swept back and forth across the room in a futile-yet-comforting search for hostiles, much as the rest of the squad was doing.

Fortunately, they made it across the room without incident. Shepard sighed loudly in relief. Whatever had attacked the geth must have already left the area.

"Door's locked," Wrex called back from the front. "Or out of power. I can't get an interface."

"So knock," Shepard suggested dryly. "Loudly."

"With pleasure," the krogan replied, and Shepard could hear the feral grin in his tone. A flare of biotic blue burst from the front of the group. The door was torn clear of its moorings and thrown across the narrow hallway beyond, where it hit the wall with an ear-rattling clang that echoed through the garage for well over a minute.

"Wanna try again?" Tali groused as the echoes faded, both hands clutched over her helmet in a useless gesture. "I think there's a few people on the Citadel who didn't hear you."

"I didn't see you offering a way in," Wrex countered easily.

"I also didn't tell everyone in the building where we were," she threw back at him.

Wrex just laughed. "If they're stupid enough to attack us, we'd be doing the galaxy a favor."

Tali sighed. "Krogans," she muttered disparagingly. Wrex shot her an inscrutable look and she waved a hand at him. "Just get to walking," she said with mild heat.

The krogan shrugged and walked through the now open doorway, the squad on his heels. The corridor beyond was a strange oval shape with a barely-elevated walkway along the bottom instead of the square walls most human designs preferred. Bands of solid orange ran the length of the hall, breaking up the expanse of solid grey that made up the rest of it. The whole thing was disconcerting to Shepard. Unfamiliar.

Once past the light from the garage however, it was also pitch black.

"So the power's out," Shepard concluded with a scowl. "And in that kind of darkness, night vision's less than useless." He activated the flashlight mounted on his helmet and ordered the others to do the same. "Go to head lights and be careful. There's no telling what's out there now." He cursed Alenko's fate again. A c-psi would be awfully useful right about now.

The squad complied with his orders and they took off into the darkness. The sound of their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the cloying shadows and the whole world sunk away until only themselves and what meager light they could produce remained. Combined with the strange design of the hallways and Shepard was finding it difficult to suppress his nerves. It was irrational, he knew that, but knowing it didn't stop the claustrophobic tightening in his chest.

A few tense minutes of creeping through inky blackness later, the squad came to an abrupt halt. The hallway they were walking down made a sudden ninety degree turn to the right, and ran smack into the twisted wreckage of what had once been a door. They stepped carefully over the broken metal and into some kind of airlock arrangement, though the far door stood open, breaking the seal. The wall to their right was transparent, revealing a control booth for the airlock. A gently beeping red light flashed periodically inside the control booth, but from inside the passage, Shepard could not see its source. Three broken turrets hung from the ceiling, trailing pieces down onto the floor below.

"Tali, Ashley and Legion, see if you can find a way into that booth," he ordered with a gesture toward the glass wall. "There's something with power in it. Maybe it will shed some light on what happened here."

The trio acknowledged his orders and began to search for an entrance. He left them to it and turned his attention to the turrets. "Looks like whoever killed the geth out front came this way too," he concluded out loud. "It's the same kind of damage."

Muttered agreement came from most of the squad, except for Garrus. "Not quite Commander," the turian said, his voice unsteady.

Shepard frowned. "What do you mean?"

He waved a taloned hand at the broken doorway behind them. "Look at the door. It fell toward the outside of the frame."

"So?" the commander asked, confused. What did that have to do with anything?

"So most people will push a door they're trying to force. Not pull," Garrus answered. Apprehension was thick in his voice. "I'm as sure as I can be that whatever did this was trying to get _out_, not in."

"Oh," Shepard concluded with a scowl. A beat later, his eyes went wide. "Oh shit."

"Yea," Garrus agreed with a nod. "They were keeping something here, something insanely dangerous, and it got loose." He paused and took a shaky breath. "And I'm pretty sure it's still trapped in here."

"And we still know nothing of what it is," Nihlus added. The Spectre groaned loudly. "Fantastic."

Shepard shot him a puzzled look, but before he could ask the question on the tip of his tongue, a sudden flurry of activity erupted from inside the booth. He just caught a flash of light through the transparent wall out of the corner of his eye before Tali's voice cried out in horror. "_Keelah_!"

A thud sounded, just around the far exit to the airlock and before he had even consciously recognized the sound, Shepard was rounding the corner. Tali had fallen on her ass, staring transfixed through the open door to the control booth. "What is it?" Shepard demanded, and the girl could only point through the door. He followed her finger and recoiled in disgust.

Inside the control booth was a fairly typical security guard set up: a handful of monitors, some controls, and a chair. The wall opposite the door was anything but typical however. An asari corpse, clad in something that may once have been a lab coat had been nailed to the wall, such that her feet hung half a meter above the floor, by her own severed arm. She had suffered from the same things that had attacked the turrets and the geth as well, evidenced by the large patches of skin and muscle hanging off her body like running wax. Thick blue blood covered nearly the entire wall around her, cast into sharp, disturbing purple with every flash of red light from the voice recorder at her feet.

Without even thinking about it, he moved to stand between Tali and the gruesome display. He leaned down and put a hand on her shoulder, causing her to flinch violently at the contact. He shot a look over at Nihlus, who had followed him out and jerked his head into the room. The Spectre nodded and slipped past him to begin examining the corpse.

With that taken care of, Shepard turned his full attention to Tali. "C'mon," he said softly, gently pulling her to her feet. He took great pains to ensure he stayed between her and the macabre scene inside at all times. She leaned heavily on him as they walked a short distance down the hall, taking what comfort she could from his presence.

"How could they do that?" she asked desperately a moment later, a quiet plea for sanity in the face of lunacy. The awful desperation in her voice forcibly reminded him of what it was all too easy to forget when faced with her intelligence and courage.

Despite her maturity, despite her skill, she was still little more than a child.

He squeezed her in a sideways hug. "Some people are just like that," he whispered quietly. "It's a sad truth of life. But that's why we're here. To stop them."

She returned the hug and buried her face into his shoulder. Comfortable silence settled over them as he let her take what comfort she could. "Thank you, Shepard," she said at last, stepping back from him. Her voice adopted an odd quality Shepard didn't know how to interpret. "You're always there for me, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "I just do what I can."

She made to respond when Nihlus' voice came over the comm. "Commander, you need to get in here," the Spectre said, his voice grave.

Shepard cocked his head in a questioning look at Tali, but she waved him off. "I'm alright, Shepard. Go on."

He nodded and cued his mic. "I'm on my way," he replied, and he hurried back to the control booth. Garrus and Nihlus were bent over the control panel, fiddling with the voice recorder that had been on the floor. "What've you found?" Shepard asked as he stepped inside.

The turians exchanged meaningful glances before Nihlus pressed a button on the recorder. "Listen for yourself."

A hiss of static came from the device for a moment before playback started. A tired, gently lilting asari voice filled the small control room. "My name is Alestia Iallis, and if you are hearing this, I am already dead. Killed by my own hubris. We thought they were safe. That we could control them." Her voice hitched as she choked back a sob. "We were wrong."

"They broke free three days ago and began killing everything. I- I can still hear the screams." Her voice broke down into messy sobs. "Goddess, please, I don't want to die. Not like this." Quiet crying filled the room for several seconds. When next she spoke, her voice trembled on the raw edge of control. "I- if you are hearing this, please, find my daughter. Her n-name is Alanya Iallis. Find her and, and tell her I'm sorry."

The recording ending with a soft click and Shepard blew out a long breath. That was heavy. "Okay," he said at length. "That was depressing as hell, and not very informative."

"Hmm," Nihlus agreed quietly. "We can be certain it was a containment breach, at least." The Spectre stared off into the middle distance, obviously lost in thought. "The only question now, is of what?"

"We'll find out when it tries to kill us, I imagine," Shepard said grimly. He took a deep, steadying breath and pushed back against the thrill of fear in his breast. "No use speculating on it now, all we'd do is scare ourselves half to death." He activated his comm unit and spoke to the whole squad. "These people were doing something stupid and whatever they were working on got loose. Odds are good we're gonna be the ones to clean up their mess."

"When aren't we?" Ashley's grumbled could just barely be heard over the comm. "Goddamn 'coats."

"Only when they don't make a mess in the first place," Shepard replied with a shrug. "Or so I'm told. Don't think that's actually happened yet." The gunnery chief only chuckled bitterly in reply.

He waved the pair of turians to precede him from the control booth and closed the door behind him. Hopefully the asari would find some peace in whatever afterlife she favored. He shook his head. He had more immediate concerns. "Anyway, get your game faces on people. Whatever these things are, if they come looking, they're not going to catch us with our pants down. Nihlus, Rex, cover our six. Tali and Urdnot on point. Everyone else, keep your finger on the trigger. There's nothing here we need alive, except maybe Benezia."

Acknowledgement of his orders rang out from everyone and they quickly assembled into the specified formation. Without another word, the squad crept down the hall, deeper and deeper into the pitch black tunnel, while headlights and gun barrels swept in jerking arcs. Thick, nervous tension settled over the entire squad like a suffocating fog. It was hard to think past the choking apprehension that had Shepard's heart pounding loudly in his ears.

It wasn't helped any by the absolute, utter silence of the facility. Outside the sound of the squad's footsteps and his own breath, there was nothing. No distant generator humming, no water rushing through pipes, no whirring electronics. The very air was still, lifeless. Dead. He didn't belong here. Nothing living did.

"Which way?" Tali's voice, quivering with nerves, abruptly broke into his increasingly troubled thoughts. The commander's head shot around to face the front, where the hallway they were following ended in a T-intersection. The new hallway shot off in either direction, with no visible indicator of where either led.

"Just pick one," he snapped, harsher than he'd meant to. Great. This place was getting to him even worse than he thought. He took a deep breath and tried to center himself. "Nobody has a map. Hell, we don't even know where we want to go. Go in whatever direction you think is prettier."

Wrex shrugged and strode off along the hall to the left, leaving the rest of the group hurrying to catch up. They settled back into formation and continued their slow but steady walk through the darkness. The hall continued in a smooth curve, its walls unadorned and the monotonous surroundings broken only by the occasional splash of blood, for several dozen meters. As they neared the next intersection however, Garrus signalled for a stop.

"Did you hear that?" he asked quietly, his voice little more than a whisper. The tension in the group skyrocketed. Grips tightened on guns and Shepard could hear his heartbeat triple under the sudden, massive influx of adrenaline. His eyes darted wildly around, futilely seeking a target.

"No," the commander answered, the words barely audible, even to himself. "What was it?"

The turian was silent for a long second, clearly listening hard. "Something rustling," he whispered back. "Close." He paused for another beat. "It's gone now."

"What was it?" Tali whispered, fear thick in her tone.

"No cl-," Garrus began, only to be interrupted by a surprised yelp from mere feet away. Shepard whirled to the source instantly, just in time to see Nihlus fall heavily on his back, a thick brownish cable wrapped around both legs. The alloy cannon in his hands roared as he hit the ground, thankfully missing everyone in the squad. Shepard instinctively flinched all the same, and in that miniscule window, the cable pulled.

The Spectre was thrown to one side of the hallway, then yanked under the elevated walkway. In the blink of an eye, Nihlus had disappeared beneath their feet. Rapid skittering and rustling, accompanied by chittering cries, filled the tunnel as Shepard, transfixed by panic, watched the marker of Nihlus' transponder get further and further away.

Half a heartbeat later, the panic was washed away in a tide of fury. Hot, burning rage suffused his very being. These things weren't going to keep Nihlus. Not when he had something to say about it. "After him!" he roared, suiting action to words.

Shepard led the blind charge in Nihlus' wake, desperately trying to keep up with whatever had taken him. It moved impossibly fast though, and even with his mass effect module active as often as he dared, he could not keep up. The thing led them on a merry chase, winding through the complex maze of tunnels. A small voice in the back of his mind began warning the commander of getting lost or led into a trap, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. He was going to find this thing, get Nihlus back, and tear it limb from limb.

And then he ran into a concrete wall.

He bounced off the wall and was knocked sprawling by the rebound. Before he'd even consciously realized he was on the ground, he was back on his feet and rushing back after Nihlus. Blinding bursts of purple light slammed into the fucking retarded piece of fucking muton shit that refused to get out of his way. Thick, choking dust filled the hall and all the while, Nihlus' signal kept getting further and further away. Psionic power hummed through the air as Shepard mindlessly threw himself at tearing down everything that had come between him and his friend, until finally, inexplicably, the Spectre's signal went silent.

"Fuck!" Shepard bellowed furiously. "Get the fuck back here you sectoid-fucking ethereal whore!" He trailed off into wordless, angry cursing, punctuated by the occasional stab of psionic power into the massive depression in the stupidly thick, and probably exterior, wall.

He was so lost in his anger, he didn't even notice Tali's approach until she put a hand on his arm. He jerked violently and whirled on her, only just stopping himself from taking her head off. She stared him down calmly and he felt an abrupt rush of shame mingle with his fury.

"Shepard, you need to calm down," she said. He grumbled something angrily, but she shook him by the shoulders. "No. Calm down," she repeated in a beseeching tone. "You can't help Nihlus like this. Please, John."

It was the use of his first name more than anything else that helped him fight free of the grip of rage. It poured out of him in a rush, leaving a bone-deep weariness and steely determination in its wake. "You're right," he said with a sigh. He smiled at her from behind his helmet. "Thanks." She nodded at him with a veiled smile and stepped back. He shot a look at the rest of the squad behind her. "We've got a new objective," he said, only mostly calmly. "We're going to find Nihlus, alive or dead, and then we're going to find whatever took him and tear it a new asshole. Any objections?"

There were none.

"EDI," Shepard said, activating his comm link to the _Normandy_. "Can you contact Nihlus?"

"No Commander," was the AI's immediate response. "Spectre Kryik is either beyond my range, his armor has been damaged, or his signal is being jammed."

Damnit. So much for easy. "Send me his last known coordinates then," he ordered. A beat later, a marker appeared on his hud. "Thanks."

"Good luck, Commander," she replied, and the line went dead.

The commander turned to back to the squad and shared the marker. "Head there," he said. Deadly purpose filled him. "Kill any of these sons of bitches that get in our way." The commander pushed past the group and led the way back out of the dead-end hallway. He could hear the squad falling in behind him, willingly following him back into the abyss. A feral grin split his lips. Whatever these bastards were, they were going to pay.

* * *

One thing became abundantly clear to Shepard as he hunted for the correct path: whoever had built this place was a psychopath that would have done Daedalus proud. He hadn't noticed in the mad chase after Nihlus, but the hallways twisted and turned in a chaotic mishmash, with randomly branching paths leading in enormous circles or straight into dead ends. The whole maze was designed to be as confusing and disorienting as possible. And it was made all the worse by the utter blackness that pervaded everything.

It was infuriating. Something Shepard was grateful for, for the low simmer of anger helped keep the fear at bay. Something had snuck past them and grabbed Nihlus from right under his nose. It had already proven it could strike at them at any moment. The fact that it _didn't_, not once in the hours they had spent navigating the narrow, winding tunnels, said something more was going on. That it was playing with them. He was both terrified of and furious at that thought.

His racing thoughts came to a halt however, when Wrex shoved open the next door and real, natural light dazzled his vision.

"Finally!" Ashley cried happily. She pushed past Wrex, still crowing, "Honest to God sunlight! It's a- grk," she cut off abruptly. Disgust warred with thick tension in her voice as she yelled back, "Commander!"

Shepard fought down a sigh. From her tone alone, he could already picture what was in there. He didn't want to see yet more of these things' handiwork. Especially not with Nihlus already in their clutches.

But he had to. "Go," he barked, and the squad surged through the door in a rush. They all took up positions around Ashley in a matter of seconds, weapons raised and ready for anything. Everyone except Tali that is. The quarian had chosen to quite pointedly cover the door they had emerged from and nothing else. After the incident at the airlock, he couldn't blame her. At least she was doing something useful.

With that thought, he turned his attention to the rest of the room, and suddenly wanted to join her. The room itself was massive, easily fifteen meters to a side and half that high. A couple meters overhead, a balcony ran the length of the right side of the room, stretching from a door he could barely see in the far wall to the stairwell inches to his right. Four long tables filled most of the space on the ground floor, and a kitchen was visible on the other side of a half wall opposite the squad's entrance.

And he couldn't see more than a single square inch of the floor, or furniture, that wasn't coated in gore. The blood had congealed into a coagulated rainbow that ran the spectrum, from the green of salarian, to the red of elcor, to dark, turian blue. It was disturbing on a fundamental level.

But not nearly as disturbing as the corpses. Here, an asari had been melted in half vertically by a gout of the powerful acid these things carried. There, a salarian whose flesh had been melted off his skull. Over there, a volus whose suit had been rent asunder and its body left to tear itself apart from the loss of pressure until nothing remained but broken, bloody meat. Everywhere he looked, there was another corpse, another horror. Revulsion and pity swelled within him. These people may have been working for Saren, but not even they deserved to die like this.

And Garrus strode out into the middle of it like it was just another day at the office. The former detective's boots squelched as he strode through the gore, his head on a swivel and Shepard could tell he missed nothing. The turian walked surely through the carnage, gently closing eyes where he passed, until he finally leaned over a turian corpse sprawled over the central table. The dead turian had been violently torn open and his organs spilled across the surface in macabre patterns.

Garrus studied the body intently for several seconds, then spoke over his shoulder. "Commander," he announced, his voice stony and full of leashed fury. "Whatever did this is a carnivore."

Shepard's eyes went wide. "You mean..."

"Yes," Garrus turned to face him and nodded tightly. "It ate pieces of him."

"Fan-fucking-tastic," Ashley growled angrily. "As if this shit wasn't bad enough."

"It gets worse," Garrus countered gravely.

Ashley began swearing incoherently even as Tali released a breathy whisper "_Keelah_," she murmured. Her voice strengthened as she asked a question, but it was obvious she wanted to know the answer no more than Shepard did. "How could it get any worse?"

The ex-cop pointed to a portion of the floor with a strange pattern in the dried blood. "They dragged at least one body through that," he answered the quarian. His voice was thick with anger and worry. "My first guess is that they dragged off a meal for later."

"Nihlus," Tali whispered quietly, worry thick in her tone. The girl shot a concerned glance at Shepard, but flinched away as she beheld the carnage of the room. She shuddered violently and looked back to the door without a word.

Garrus nodded his agreement.

"We need to find him," Shepard said angrily. "Now. There's a door upstairs that points in the right direction. Get to it."

Acknowledgements rang out, but barely a full second later, an ear-piercing screech heralded the arrival of three enormous _things_ as they burst out of the floor and charged at the squad. The creatures were enormous, eye-less insectoid quadrupeds covered in thick red-brown chitin. Each leg extended from a corner of their body into a series of distinct joints, much like an Earth spider's, and ending in a viciously sharp point. The legs grew smoothly from the base of a tubular torso that reached skyward before bending forward into a short hook. The very tip of the tube bore a circular ring of dangerously sharp teeth, glistening with viscous saliva. Halfway between the bend and the mouth hung a pair of jointed, powerful arms ending in clawed, three fingered hands. And to top it all off, another pair of limbs grew out of the creature's sides. Instead of arms however, these limbs were tentacles that ended in a three-petaled bulb of rigid chitin that clacked open and closed as the bug skittered at the squad.

Shepard took the sight in in a fraction of a second and his mind, keyed up as it was, bypassed all conscious thought in favor of going directly to panic. There was only one thing in the galaxy that looked like that. "Chryssalids!" he bellowed in warning, instinctively throwing himself out of the path of the insectoid monstrosities. He took desperate, wild shots at them even as he dove, but instead of forcing them back, it only seemed to drive them into a frenzied rage.

There was a brief, painfully loud slurping sound and three globs of frothing green liquid the size of a softball were flying through the air just barely slow enough to be seen. Shepard's dive had thankfully taken him out of the line of fire, but not everyone was so fortunate. Garrus, in the middle of turning to face the threat, was struck directly on the side of his head with a loud splash. The force of the impact threw the turian to the ground with a crash before harsh sizzling filled the air.

The former detective fumbled desperately at the clasp to his helmet, but his efforts died with an agonized scream barely a full second after he hit the ground. The withering rain of plasma from the squad faltered briefly at the sound, and Tali just barely dodged the second volley of acid. Triumphant chittering sounded from the bugs and primordial terror abruptly gave way to towering fury in Shepard.

Raw, unrestrained psionic might flared to life around Shepard, a corruscating halo of power that gave vent to his rage. A thought grabbed one of the creatures and tore it in twain, sending thick grey-green blood flying through the air. The other two creatures froze abruptly, as if they had been nothing more than stone given life, until they were obliterated an instant later by incandescent, plasmic fury.

Wrex released the trigger of his weapon then viciously kicked the bugs' remains, muttering something under his breath. The krogan threw the body across the room with his foot and looked to the commander. "This, Shepard?" He waved a hand around the room. "This was too good for these pukes," he said, his voice dripping venom.

Shepard ignored the angry krogan for now. He made more important things to worry about. Like the turian who had only lapsed into silence because he had no more breath to scream with. "EDI," he called into the comm. "We need a medivac portal, now!"

"Right away Commander," she replied instantly. As her final syllable reached his ears, a portal straight into the _Normandy_'s medbay was torn open mere feet from Garrus' spasmodically twitching form. Purple streamers coalesced around him and gently lifted the turian into the air. Ashley stood up alongside him, stubbornly continuing to do what she could for him with nothing more than a medkit and good intentions.

A wave of psionic power pushed Garrus ahead of him as Shepard stepped through the wormhole, delivering the turian into Dr. Chakwas' care. The doctor, mouth set in a grim line, pointed to the nearest bed and hurried over beside it.

"What happened?" she demanded, hurriedly sorting through her equipment.

Shepard gently set the gasping and twitching turian on the bed as he answered. "Side of his head. He got hit by some kind of acid able to melt through a quarter-inch of Vahlenite in under a second."

As soon as he finished, Ashley spoke up. "It's slower on flesh, but not by much. His right cheek and lower jaw are a mess. Once I got his helmet off, I tried to use medigel to contain it, but I'm not sure how much good it did."

"You may have saved his life," Dr. Chakwas said distractedly, rummaging through her supplies. She made a soft noise of success and pulled a tube of some kind of cream out of a drawer. She turned to the turian and began applying it directly onto his skin. "Now, out. He can't afford any distractions."

"Right," Shepard accepted quietly. He'd done everything he could for Garrus. Nihlus was still out there, and he didn't have the luxury of time. "Take good care of him, doc."

She didn't respond, being wholly focused on her work, so Shepard exhaled heavily and turned to the portal. Coincidentally just as Tali was stepping through, Garrus' ruined helmet in hand. She wordlessly handed it to Shepard, who nodded in thanks and set it on the floor against the wall, where it would be out of the way. He glanced back at the bed and whispered a prayer that he was sure went unheard, before stepping back through the wormhole.

Ashley and Tali had preceded him out, so as soon as he was on the far side, the tear in the fabric of reality swiftly sealed itself behind him. He took a steadying breath, then walked over and kicked the broken remains of one of the things that had attacked them. It flopped over and one of its tentacle arm things broke off with a sickening, wet tearing noise. Now that he wasn't full of adrenaline, he began to consciously notice that his first assumption was wrong. These things weren't chryssalids, even though they were freakishly close in appearance.

"What the hell are these things?" he wondered aloud. He scowled as another question occurred to him. "And where did they come from?"

"The ducts," Tali said, her voice somewhat shaky. Shepard shot a look her way to find her crouched near where the bugs had appeared. She picked up a small piece of grating and showed it to Shepard. "They're using the ventilation to get around."

"As if this mission wasn't enough like a bad horror flick," Ashley groaned loudly. She shook her head. "That still doesn't tell us what they are though."

"Rachni," Wrex answered, tightly restrained anger filling his voice. "These idiots resurrected the Rachni."

"For those of us who have no idea what you're talking about," the gunnery chief returned. "What are the Rachni?"

Legion, of all people, chose to field that question. "The Rachni were a hive-minded insectoid species that initiated hostilities with the Citadel Council approximately 2,182 years ago. Salarian explorers opened an inactive mass relay into their territory and the Rachni invaded. The Council was overwhelmed and were on the verge of annihilation when the Salarian Union found the krogan. The krogan were uplifted and set against the Rachni forces, where their breeding rates and physical capabilities proved invaluable."

"We drove back the Rachni and hunted them to extinction. The salarians raised us up as soldiers and we won their war for them," Wrex cut in bitterly. His upper lip curled in disgust. "And as soon as the Council had replaced us with the turians, they repaid us with a sterility plague."

"Inaccurate," Legion stated. "The genophage was not released until krogan forces attempted to annex vast portions of Citadel Space."

"We were running out of room and resources," Wrex roared angrily, defensively, as he whirled on the geth. "What else were we supposed to do? Stay where we were and starve?"

Legion's head flaps flared once and he said, "Slower breeding practices would have been the optimal solution."

Wrex scowled thunderously at the robot, but Shepard forced his way between them. "Enough!" he shouted. He met the krogan's furious stare with his own. "We don't have time for this shit. Argue all you want when we're done, but these Rachni," he tested the unfamiliar word. "still have Nihlus. We're going to get him back."

"Bah!" Wrex spat. Deep, resentful anger burned in his eyes as he started Shepard down. "The turian can rot."

Faster than the krogan could followed, Shepard's hand lashed out and grabbed his armor. He was pulled down to eye level and Shepard briefly flared his psionics. A purple halo burst to life around his helmet, filling the air with long, waving purple streamers. "I don't know your problems with turians, and frankly, I don't care. Nihlus is on my team. That means we're getting him back. We don't leave people behind," he said, his tone angry, firm and unyielding. "Ever. Not as long as I'm in command."

Wrex's eyes narrowed. "Then mayb-" he began, only to be cut off by Shepard's sudden motion. The commander's psionics flared and he bodily picked up the krogan before slamming him into the nearest table. One hand held Wrex down while the other reared back, wreathed in psionic power.

"Finish that sentence," he dared Wrex, his posture and voice in a perfect, deathly calm. Internally was another matter. Anger at the krogan's callousness battled with the fierce comradery that they had formed, made all the worse by his own instinctive loyalty to his men. He did not want to have to do this. Fucking psychotic lizard.

Fortunately, he didn't have to. Instead of attacking, as Shepard half-expected, Wrex chuckled dryly. "You'd have made a good krogan, Carnifex." He batted aside Shepard's surprise-slackened grip and regained his feet. One hand formed into a fist and slapped his chest in a salute. He nodded at Shepard. "Let's go save the turian then."

Shepard returned the nod, unsure of what had just happened, but unwilling to let it show. "Let's," he agreed. One hand came up and pointed to the door on the balcony and he directed his voice to the whole squad. "Head up that way and let's get out of here."

* * *

The balcony door opened into another corridor, nearly identical to the one they had entered the cafeteria from. Including the stygian blackness that had plagued the rest of the facility thus far, much to everyone's aggravation.

"Christ, it's like they've never heard of windows," Ashley groused, as soon as she realized what lay ahead. Shepard couldn't be sure, but he thought he detected a tremor of fear in her voice as well.

"Windows are a structural weakness," Legion countered calmly. "And they give line of sight into the building." The geth's head flaps twitched slightly into an expression Shepard couldn't identify. "It would be illogical to put them in a secure facility."

"Yea, but then we'd at least be able to see," she rejoined sourly. "This crawling around in utter darkness bullshit is getting old."

"Amen to that," Shepard agreed firmly. The darkness was a threat, the damn rachni had already proven that twice over. Then again, a threat wasn't going to keep him away from one of his men in trouble. "But we don't have much of a choice; Nihlus is counting on us. Let's not let him down."

"Damn straight," Ashley said tightly, false bravado lacing her voice. Tali murmured her agreement, though judging by her tone, she definitely wanted nothing more than to leave this place and never return.

He couldn't blame her. So did he.

He shook his head. Now wasn't the time for that kind of thinking. He waved a hand and the squad trooped through the door, and they were swallowed by the shadows once more. As they moved through the hallway though, Shepard realized there was one major difference between this hallway and the one they had come in through. The maze was gone. The randomly turning, twisting and looping paths had been replaced with neatly ordered, geometric halls, complete with multicolored lines along the wall that, for some odd reason, changed order and sometimes even colors with every intersection they passed.

For whatever reason, the uniformity, the planned regularity of it was comforting, even with the occasional splatter of blood that broke their patterns. It was absurd, but anything was better than the images and memories racing through his mind. He suppressed a shudder and shook his head to dispel the thoughts. There was nothing he could do for Nihlus except get to him. Driving himself insane with worry wasn't going to help anyone.

"What do you think the lines are for?" he wondered aloud, hoping that conversation would help keep his darkening thoughts at bay.

"Directions," Tali answered immediately, her voice unsteady. She probably had the same idea he did. "We use the same system on the Flotilla. Each color represents a specific location and all you have to do is follow the line of that color to get there."

"On the Flotilla, the colors are standardized, so you can always find where you're going, even when new to the ship. It's really quite nice. Like this one time when I tried to visit the _Alarei_, I-"

"Quiet," Wrex growled, raising a fist. Tali's babbling cut off with a squeak. The krogan took a deep, noisy breath through his nose, then shot a look over at Shepard. "They're near."

Shepard nodded, and spoke in a whisper. "Quick and quiet then. Keep going this wa-" He cut himself off as a flash of color on the wall caught his eye. "Hold up."

Sharp red, alien lettering had been painted on the wall, right above the quintet of colored stripes. By itself, it was nothing spectacular, but then his helmet kicked in and translated the nonsensical runes into a proper language. It was a key, he realized, a legend for the color code. His eyes caught on one particular entry and he decided, that's where they wanted to go first.

"Alright, red goes to the reactor," he said, just as quietly as before. "We'll go there and get the power back on. With any luck, we can get the lights back on at least, possibly more."

"Thank God," Ashley breathed softly, relief thick in her voice.

"We agree," Legion piped up just as quietly. "In addition, we have observed inactive virtual intelligence terminals. We judge it highly likely we can retrieve information from it."

"Perfect," Ashley agreed with a sharp nod. Her light swept along the red swipe and she pointed after it. "Let's go."

The next few, incredibly tense, minutes passed agonizingly slowly. They made their way as fast as they could without undue noise, but in the all-consuming darkness, every second seemingly stretched into minutes, every minute into hours. With the constant threat of another rachni attack hanging over their heads, it was unnerving in a way few things can be. Every time Wrex called for a stop, Shepard was half convinced that the pounding of his heart would draw every bug in the building straight to them.

When the door to the reactor room loomed out of the darkness, Shepard couldn't stop the quiet sigh of relief that escaped him. Soon they would be out of the soul-crushing blackness of these damned hallways. Wrex holstered his gun on his back then stepped up to the door, set his hands firmly on a small protrusion, and heaved.

Powerful krogan flesh, seamlessly assisted by thick bands of synthetic muscle, delivered truly staggering amounts of force to the thin metal barrier. Small grunts escaped the large reptile as he put everything he had into forcing the door open. Hydraulic locks quietly hissed and burst under the strain, and thick off-white liquid oozed out of the frame as Wrex forced the door back into it.

The squad slipped one by one through the narrow opening between the krogan and the opposite door while he held it open. The instant the last of them passed, Wrex carefully repositioned himself inside the door before letting it go with a barely-audible sigh. Shepard could hear the door slowly grind out of the wall again, but without its hydraulic fluid, it lacked the force to properly close. Oh well, he thought, at least it'll be easy to get out.

The reactor room itself looked appropriately like a power plant to Shepard's eyes as flashlight beams played along the thick, twisting cables branching outward from the monolithic tower in the center of the enormous room. The tower was almost ten meters thick and stretched so high that the beams from their lights couldn't illuminate the top. Of course, he had nothing more than a theoretical understanding of non-elerium-based generators, so that may have been a fancy AI core or Rachni cloning vat for all he knew.

"Tali, Legion," he said, grabbing the pair's attention. "See if you can figure out what's wrong with this thing. Turn the lights on ASAP. Rex and Urdnot, watch the door for guests. Williams, with me. We're covering the engineers while they repair this thing."

"You're not going to help us?" Tali asked quietly. "You're an engineer too."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Uh, Tali? I use an entirely different technology base," he said, pointedly shaking his plasma rifle. He waved a hand at the tower. "I have no idea how that works. I could probably figure it out in time, but that's something we don't have."

"Oh, right," she said embarrassedly. "I forgot." Her hands twisted around each other in a nervous gesture. "I, uh,"

Shepard coughed gently. "Tali, time," he said, gently stressing the last word.

She flinched as if struck, but nodded and immediately joined Legion in examining the thing. Shepard shook his head in fond exasperation. That girl. He dismissed that train of thought before it could really even start and turned his attention to the walls.

The next few minutes passed slowly. His beam of light bounced along the walls and floor, seeking any potential opening the rachni could enter through. He marked three on his hud and shared it with Ashley, who returned two more she had spotted. They kept watch, sweeping their flashlights along in irregular patterns, until finally, with a triumphant cry from the quarian, the lights in the room flickered to life with a low, quiet hum.

The sudden surge of low-level background noise sent a wholly unexpected surge of relief rushing through Shepard. The end of that absolute silence did wonders for his mood. He sent a look over to Tali and spotted her stepping away from the machine with Legion at her side.

"What was the problem?" he asked.

"The He3 feed had been severed," she replied easily, absurdly cheered by her success with the generator. "With Legion's help, it was simple enough to fix."

The geth nodded his agreement with her statement.

"Good work, both of you," Shepard praised them. He sent a look at Legion. "Think you can locate one of the VI terminals you saw?"

"No need," Wrex interrupted from the door. "There's one up here."

"Boot it up," Shepard replied. "We're on the way."

* * *

Shepard made his way back to the reactor room's door in much higher spirits than he had entered. Finally, something had gone right in this godforsaken place. Even better, Wrex managed to get the VI up and running as he approached. A low holographic terminal he hadn't noticed when he came in flared to life in a hail of static under the krogan's characteristically tender care. Wrex whacked the base of the display again, and the image solidified into a shape vaguely reminiscent of an asari.

Semi-transparent purple plates, separated by seemingly random gaps of open space, formed the skin of the construct. Flickers of color and text raced across each one of the plates in vertical sequences, forming a chaotic mish-mash of technological detail. Bright yellow-red bands traced geometric patterns through, and under, the plates like a stunted system of blood vessels. The piping was clearly visible on the hologram's skin however, and it accentuated the shape of the hologram well, appearing almost like embroidery on an invisible latex suit.

"Greetings," the hologram spoke in the faux cheerfulness of secretaries everywhere. Wrex stepped back deferentially as Shepard approached, so the VI turned her attention to the human. "I am the Virtual Intelligence Assistant for the Binary Helix Peak 15 Research Facility. You may call me Mira. May I ask your name?"

"Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard, of the XCS _Normandy_," Shepard rattled off quickly.

"One moment please," the VI said pleasantly. It waited a beat, then continued. "Commander Shepard, you are trespassing on a secure Binary Helix research facility. Please vacate the premises or I will be forced to notify security."

"I don't know if you've realized it yet, but security has bigger problems than me to worry about," Shepard countered firmly. "If they're not already dead."

"Security has been notified of your presence," Mira responded pleasantly, dutifully ignoring Shepard's words. "You will be escorted from the premises and charged for any damages that result. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Shepard had to fight the urge to sink his face into his palm. Why was the Citadel so against proper, sentient VIs? It would be so much easier to deal with than this bad chat-bot knock off. "Yes," he said exasperatedly. "There is. I need a map of the facility and everything you know about Matriarch Benezia."

"You are not authorized for that information," the VI chirped happily. "I am only able to distribute such information to those with Secure Access, such as Council Spectres and Binary Helix executives."

"We're here with a Spectre," Ashley cut in over Shepard's shoulder. "Nihlus Kryik. He granted us the authority to act in his stead."

"One moment please." The VI fell silent for a long second, then said, "I'm sorry. Your statement cannot be confirmed and Citadel records indicate no such arrangement. Do you have physical proof?"

"No," Ashley groused, defeated.

"I apologize, but I am not able to di-" The VI's speech cut off abruptly. The hologram flickered violently and flashed a blazing red. Her voice sounded once again, this time harsh and blaring. "Alert. Attempted unauthorized access of company databanks. Initiating countermeasures." The hologram twisted violently and abruptly died.

What the hell? Shepard thought. Who was hack... He trailed off in his own mind as he realized the absurdly obvious answer to the half-formed question. He turned around and cocked his head inquisitively at Legion. The geth answered him with a distinctly smug flare of his head flaps. "Get anything useful?"

"Yes," the geth replied simply. A beat passed and a stream of data flashed over his hud, swiftly coalescing into a shape Shepard immediately recognized as a map of the facility. The geth had even gone so far as to make the hallways they had followed as well as the most likely route Nihlus had been dragged through.

"Nice," Ashley said approvingly. She walked over and slapped Legion on the back. "You do good work."

"Agreed," Tali said. A beat passed and she yelped quietly in surprise. Shepard chuckled to himself. From her body language, she had forgotten who she was talking to for a moment. Good.

The commander turned his attention back to Legion. "Nice job. Is that all?"

"No," Legion answered in his normal monotone. "Matriarch Benezia was last seen visiting the Rift Station sub-facility." A section of the map on Shepard's hud, built deep in the mountain the facility was built aside, was highlighted in gold. Then a small portion of that same section, built deep under the rest of the facility, as well as a series of ventilation tunnels that led into it was highlighted in bright green. "Based on assembled data, we judge a 94.216 percent chance this is the path Spectre Kryik's abductors followed."

Shepard blew out a breath of relief. They hadn't reached him yet, but at least now they knew where he was. "Excellent work Legion. We need to get there ASAP."

"Shepard-Commander, we recommend the use of the tram system linking this facility to Rift Station. It is the optimal path." The geth blinked once. "There is a boarding station 127 meters away."

"That'll do," he agreed. He waved one hand toward the exit. "Lead the way."

Legion nodded and strode through the still half open doorway. The rest of the squad fell in behind him and the pace picked up to a steady jog. Thank god for getting the power back on. They could actually move now. Even better, the lights seemed to have scared off the Rachni. It took them less than a minute to reach the tram station, but in that time, Shepard didn't hear, see or smell any sign of the disturbing things. It was a huge relief.

The fact that a tram was already waiting for them at the station was only icing on the cake. The boxy transport hung suspended from a cable several meters above the floor of the tunnel that served as the tramway. A wide U-shaped dock embraced the tram itself and kept it firmly in place. Doors on both sides of the thing hung open, just waiting for passengers to carry into the darkness at the far end of the tunnel. It was a fantastic stroke of luck. Almost too fantastic.

"Rex and Tali with me, check the tram for bombs," Shepard ordered firmly, leaving no room for dispute. "I don't trust this. It's too easy. The rest of you, keep an eye out for Rachni." Acknowledgments rang over the comm, and Shepard bent to his task.

Surprisingly, frustratingly, several minutes passed and none of them could find the slightest hint of sabotage. Maybe their luck really was turning around? Shepard snorted at the absurd thought. That wasn't going to happen any time soon.

"It's clean," Shepard announced to the room at large. "It makes no sense, but it's clean."

"Relax Skipper," Ashley said dismissively. She stepped past him and into the tram car. "We're way overdue for some good luck."

"Maybe," Shepard said, unconvinced. A beat passed in silence then he shook his head. Nihlus didn't have time for him to play the paranoia game. "Doesn't matter anyway. Let's get moving."

The group piled into the car with ease. A press of a button slid the doors closed and the box jerked as the dock released its hold. Overhead, the cable whirred to life and the squad was on its way to Rift Station.


	20. Fumigation

**Chapter 19: Fumigation**

By the time the tram arrived, perfectly safely, at the far end of the tunnel, Shepard was a nervous wreck of paranoia and dread. He had practically begged Murphy to intervene in the crossing, yet nothing had gone wrong. There wasn't even a rachni welcoming committee on the receiving dock. As far as he could tell, everything had gone exactly to plan.

And as every other part of this mission could attest, Shepard never got anything to go perfectly. Ever. A sense of sick, formless dread welled within him as the tram reached the dock. A loud click sounded and the car jerked slightly as it was locked in place. A beat later, the doors slid open soundlessly and allowed the squad to depart.

They emerged into an almost perfect mirror of the other dock, complete with small crates of cargo and a platform leading to a nearly-identical door set into the wall beyond the tram. The only major difference being that the far side had not been covered in corpses. Relief surged through Shepard at the sight. Finally something had gone wrong. He could stop waiting for the other boot to drop.

Aliens, primarily turians with a small collection of asari and salarians, had been torn apart in an orgy of violence. Bodies lay strewn over nearly every surface of the platform, and sometimes each other in waist-high piles. Blood and offal coated the floor in thick layers, and he could faintly hear a steady dripping sound as it fell from the edge. The platform was a chaotic and ruined nightmare that was sure to haunt his sleep for weeks to come. He could only be thankful he didn't have to smell it too.

Shepard cast his gaze over the bodies and cursed under his breath. Garrus' ability to read events from their aftermath was uncanny, and would have been enormously useful here. So of course the rachni had to take him out. Shepard took a deep, steadying breath to calm the flash of rage that thought had inspired. With a mental effort, he turned his full attention on the bodies. As he studied them, he began to notice a pattern to them.

The ratio of turian to 'other' bodies changed dramatically as they got further from the tram, and the turian bodies furthest out, and nearest the door to the facility, were all wearing light, matte black armor eerily reminiscent of the security forces from Port Hanshan. Most likely the security Mira had mentioned.

The bodies nearest the tram however, wore little more than labcoats. They had been torn apart regardless. Many fell mere feet from the tram's doors, hands reaching for the salvation that would never come.

"_Keelah_," Tali whispered quietly, her voice thick. She swallowed heavily and gave voice to his thoughts. "They were trying to escape."

"Didn't do 'em much good," Wrex grunted with a hint of satisfaction. The krogan strolled calmly into the carnage, kicking bodies aside as he went to form a path. "Let's go."

"We don't have time to stare," Shepard agreed. He consulted the map Legion had provided and in a matter of seconds found a route that led to Nihlus' probable location. "If we he-"

The commander was cut off by Mira's voice. "You are trespassing on private Binary Helix property," The VI's, for some reason still utterly pleasant and polite, voice echoed from a speaker buried somewhere in the tram station and easily filled the space. "Security has been dispatched to apprehend you. Please surrender your weapons and comply with their instructions, or you will be killed."

The cheerfully pleasant tone of voice made the threat as eerie as it was absurd. And it was made all the worse when one of the bodies littered around them started blaring loudly. It was a siren of some kind, and the sound cracked through the still, dead air of the station like a whip. Piercing echoes bounced down the tunnel into the distance. His armor absorbed the worst of the sound, but even behind its protection, the sound was deafening, almost painful..

Wrex froze. The krogan took a long, deep breath through his nose and turned to Shepard. "We need to leave," he shouted through the comm. "Now."

"What?" Ashley asked in surprise. "Why?"

The surety with which Wrex spoke had been all Shepard had needed to hear to comply. "Doesn't matter," he said as he charged through the bodies, down the path Wrex had forged.. "Let's go." Behind him, he could hear the rest of the squad falling in behind him. Apparently, they trusted him enough to follow along. The thought was encouraging.

"Talk later," the krogan shot over the comm. "Outrun a horde of rachni now."

Well, Shephard thought idly. The warm and fuzzy feeling is gone now. Wrex's words lent wings to the squads' feet. They practically flew across the platform and through the door into the compound proper. By the time they got inside, even Shepard's comparatively blunt human hearing could detect the chittering stampede of thousands of the enormous insects surging toward the tram station.

Oh goody. There's even more of them than he'd thought. Shepard was going to enjoy getting out of this place and bombarding it with the _Normandy_'s main gun until the mountain had become a valley of the same size. Fuck what the NDC has to say about it; this place deserved nothing less. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to resurrect these things?

They charged down the facility's walkways and in only a minute, had left the tram station far, far behind. The desperate sprint slowed to a jog and then a walk and Shepard called a halt. "We should be safe here," he said quietly between deep breaths. "We need to find a route to Nihlus that won't take us back there."

Before he'd even finished talking, the map appeared on his helmet's hud, complete with a collection of hallways and rooms highlighted in red. "We recommend this route," Legion said. "Accessible security information suggests it is clear of rachni."

"Let's get to it then," Shepard agreed with a nod. "Rex and Urdnot on point."

The dog quietly barked an affirmation and fell in beside the krogan as they followed the route laid out by Legion. Shepard followed along behind them, grim determination etched into every line of his body. He was going to get Nihlus, find Benezia, then torch this place. And he was going to cackle maniacally while he did it. Fucking killer space bugs.

* * *

"That," Ashley said quietly, her voice simultaneously nervous and impressed. "Is one hell of a drop."

Shepard nodded mutely beside her. Less than an inch from his toes, a shaft dropped well over a hundred meters straight down, deep into the heart of the mountain. Judging from the control panel on the wall beside the entrance to it, it was most likely an elevator shaft, and according to the map Legion had grabbed, it was the only way down to Nihlus that didn't involve crawling through rachni-infested ventilation.

Unfortunately, it was no longer able to perform such a task. The doors had been violently torn open and left as little more than twisted scrap. Liberal splashes of acid had bubbled and melted nearly every surface within 10 feet of the shaft. The rachni had clearly been through here already. Shepard balanced carefully on the unsteady terrain and leaned over the shaft. His light diffused almost completely before reaching the bottom, but even still, he could see faintly make out the broken remains of the car.

He took a few snapshots then pulled himself back onto solid ground and blew out an explosive breath. "Figures," he said, glancing at Ashley. "Still think I'm too paranoid?"

The gunnery chief just grunted noncommittally.

"What now?" Tali asked in the ensuing silence. "We," she cut off with a glance at Wrex. "Most of us can't take that kind of a fall, and I don't see any other way down."

Wrex snorted loudly, but didn't say anything. He glanced at Shepard and cocked his head inquisitively. The look in his eyes echoed the question he was too proud to ask.

Shepard's lips quirked into a smile. He'd always wanted to say this. "That's because you're not thinking with portals." Tali made a soft sound of realization and Wrex frowned at him. Shepard shrugged and opened a line to the _Normandy_. A quick tap sent over a package of targeting data for the t-psis. "EDI, I need a portal between these points."

A few seconds later, psionic light filled the corridor. Shadows danced across the hall as the portal coalesced, linking their position with the bottom of the shaft so far below. The wormhole's plane was cocked at a slight angle, perfectly aligned with the far end hovering a few feet above the bottom of the pit. Shepard waved a hand at it and the squad hopped in.

Shepard landed lightly atop the broken elevator car, easily finding his balance on the wildly uneven surface with the ease of long practice. The portal swiftly sealed itself behind him and would have dropped the shaft back into pitch blackness were it not for the state of the elevator. The roof of the car had collapsed almost completely, leaving Shepard's shoulders level with the top of the door into the room beyond. Dim red light filtered through the open door, giving the shaft a hellish cast.

"Rex, take point," Shepard ordered as soon as the portal closed. The dog yipped quietly and slipped into the opening without a sound. The rest of the squad trickled through behind him, tense and ready.

The room beyond held all the markings of a fairly advanced biology lab, to Shepard's inexpert eye. It was hard to be sure however, because this room, like almost every other one in this godforsaken place, had been ransacked. Expensive looking equipment lay shattered, broken into a billion pieces and strewn across the floor. Unidentifiable fleshy fluids were splattered liberally on nearly every surface, and broken tables were scattered chaotically throughout the room.

"You took your time, Commander," a familiar voice drawled the instant Shepard stepped into the room, the very same instant that his hud registered a regained signal. As one, the squad whirled on the source of the voice, and Shepard had to fight the urge to cheer. Tali and Rex didn't bother, cheerfully crying out their delight.

Just to the right of the elevator doors stood a shoulder-high barrier of broken tables and distinctly insectoid bodies, a veritable bulwark that blocked off access to a full fifth of the room. Thick blood, cast a deep black by the red lightning, oozed out of the wall and slowly seeped across the floor, carrying small pieces of dead rachni along with it in endless, slow circles.

Behind the barrier stood Nihlus with his alloy cannon resting atop the wall, where he could fire it one-handed. The turian had definitely seen better days. His armor was pitted and corroded in several places, obviously the victim of some of that crazy acid. His helmet was missing completely and from the way he was holding it, his right arm was out of commission. But he was alive. That was what counted.

"Well, you know how it goes," Shepard answered the Spectre with a dismissive shrug, though he didn't, couldn't, stop the heady relief that seeped into his voice. He met the turian's gaze and nodded happily. "If I came in to rescue you immediately, you wouldn't have a chance to learn anything."

Nihlus leveled a glare at him. "I will pass on future lessons, if you please," he practically growled. Shepard held up his hands in surrender and the turian's glare slackened. He glanced down to something at his feet. "We need to get out of here. I found a survivor, but he will not last much longer without medical attention. Before he fell unconscious, he implied he knew something of import."

"On it," Ashley said, before the turian had even finished speaking. She hopped over the barrier, looked down, cursed loudly and threw herself to her knees, taking her out of Shepard's line of sight. A series of rapid hand signals ordered the rest of the squad to set up on overwatch and Shepard took the opportunity to climb over the barrier himself.

As soon as he did, he understood the gunnery chief's reaction. A salarian lay sprawled out on the floor beside Nihlus's feet, clearly unconscious and just as clearly in a great deal of agony. Deep rents were torn in his flesh, bloody green bites that had been violently severed from their donor. A piece of his arm here, side there, even one of his horns had been devoured by the rachni. All of that paled in comparison to his legs however, or what was left of them. The unfortunate sap just stopped a few inches down his thighs, allowing thin green blood to slowly seep out into an enormous puddle covering most of the area behind the barricade.

Shepard shot a look at Nihlus. "Yes, the rachni were eating him," the Spectre confirmed. His voice shook slightly, a minor tremble that hinted at a blazing fury. "I believe they intended the same for me. Fortunately, I am a tougher meal than an unarmed scientist."

Shepard shot a meaningful glance at the pile of rachni corpses. "I can see that." His voice turned sincere. "It's good to see you alive, Nihlus."

"You as well, Commander." He paused and his eyes bounced across the rest of the squad before his mandibles twitched into a frown. "What happened to Vakarian?"

Shepard grimaced. "He took a faceful of acid spit. He was alive when we got him back to the _Normandy_, but beyond that, I can't say."

The tendons in Nihlus' good hand creaked as it tightened into a fist. "Damn," he spat under his breath. The Spectre hissed quietly and visibly forced the topic from his mind. "Do you yet know if Benez-"

Nihlus' question was cut off by a sudden scuffle breaking out on the floor. The salarian had surged awake in an instant, slapping away the sedative Ashley was about to pump into him. The gunnery chief jerked back with a surprised oath, falling on her ass in the salarian's blood.

"No!" the amphibian scientist half-yelled, half-groaned. His eyes darted around and landed on Nihlus before a hand twitched out and loosely grabbed the Spectre's boot. He coughed once, dribbling blood out of his mouth, and continued, only fractionally more calmly. "I-I am d-dying. Li-listen to m-me."

"Easy," Ashley said soothingly as she settled back on her knees beside the man. "Just let m-"

"No!" the salarian repeated, desperation thick in his voice. "H-have to sp-speak. Our sins c-can't be forgotten."

"What're you talking about?"

The salarian's gaze disappeared far into the middle distance. "We f-found it decades ago. A ship, a _rachni_ ship, drifting since the war. T-there were eggs, cry-cryo-" he coughed out another wad of green blood. "frozen."

"A two-thousand year old egg hatched?" Nihlus asked in surprise. His voice turned quietly furious. "And you let it live?!"

"Yes," the salarian coughed wetly again. "W-we planned to clone rachni. Make an army. B-but the egg, the egg was a queen. She laid more eggs and w-was taken away." His head fell back into his own blood with a wet slap. When next he spoke, his voice was on the verge of breaking. "Our b-biggest mistake. The rachni need a queen. With-without, they are feral, animals. Insane."

He descended into a coughing fit, splattering more globs of blood and vomit into the ruinous puddle. Shepard and Nihlus traded helpless glances. The salarian suddenly heaved himself up and onto the turian, where he clung to Nihlus' waist with one hand. The other hand pressed a datapad into Nihlus' bad hand. He locked gazes with Nihlus and spoke in a rush. "Key to neutron purge, kill everything in hot labs. Lure rachni, activate purge. Run."

Nihlus nodded slowly and the salarian collapsed. He hit the floor and Shepard could faintly hear him say in a slow, breathy whisper, "Thank you." The scientist shuddered once and his eyes drifted close. He let out a low breath and went still.

Ashley scurried over to his side and checked him over quickly. A few seconds later however, she sat back on her heels, look to Shepard and shook her head. The commander nodded before turning to Nihlus. "You heard the man," he said. "Let's go fry us some bugs."

"This laboratory's control room is through that door," Legion offered from the other side of the barrier. When Shepard glanced over, the geth pointed out a door set in the wall directly across from the elevator. "We presume the purge controls are also there."

"Good call," Shepard agreed with a nod. He turned back to Nihlus and made a show of looking him over. "You up for this?"

"No," Ashley said firmly as she began fussing over the turian. Her medkit moved in practiced motions over his wounds, leaving a thick healing gel in its wake. "He's not."

Nihlus' mandibles flexed in a motion Shepard had rarely seen before. The turian was absolutely furious. "I'm fine," he countered grimly. He set aside his alloy cannon and patiently endured her care. "I simply need to force my arm back into its socket. I could not afford to take the time when I was alone."

"How long does it take?" Shepard asked. Dislocated shoulders were nearly instant fixes for humans. Was turian physiology that weird?

"Enough time for an opportunistic rachni to kill me," came the answer. "My exoskeleton renders internal bone movements difficult, even when correcting a problem." He gently pushed Ashley away from him and gingerly held out his right hand to Shepard. "Your assistance would speed the process immensely."

The commander cautiously gripped the turian's wrist and met his calm gaze. "You sure about this?" he asked at length.

"Yes. I am going to see these animals dead," Nihlus answered firmly. His eyes blazed with surety of purpose and the human knew then and there that he would not be dissuaded, not while these rachni still lived.

Shepard blew out a long breath. "Alright, fine. What do you need?"

The turian ignored Ashley's murmur of protest and prepared himself for the move. He bent his knees slightly and flexed his mandibles in the turian equivalent of a grimace. "Hold my arm steady then, on my signal, pull to your right."

Shepard steadied his grip and his feet burrowed into the carpet of blood for better footing. When he thought he was ready, he nodded to the Spectre.

Nihlus returned the nod and, without another word, forcefully twisted his torso. He grunted in pain and a low grinding sound reached Shepard's ears as the Spectre pulled. Several seconds of the tense standoff passed before Nihlus growled out, "Now!"

Shepard immediately pulled the turian's arm to the side with a quick twist of his hips. The grinding sound intensified for a brief moment, followed by a sharp, crackling pop. Nihlus stumbled to his knees, breathing heavily. He shook his head loosely and stood back up. His injured arm began to move in progressively larger motions and he grinned happily. "Much better. Thank you, Commander."

"No problem," Shepard replied easily. He led all three of them in the corner back over the barricade. A wave of his hand sent Rex and Wrex through the door Legion had singled out, and the rest of the squad followed on their heels. The room beyond was a rather understated and mundane affair. A small, and now very crowded, office with a single VI terminal standing prominently against the rear wall and a bank of switches, buttons and physical screens running along the right side. There was a single, wheeled chair before the bank of monitors, but the room was otherwise completely empty. And much to Shepard's surprise, completely untouched by the chaos that had ransacked the rest of the facility.

"Huh," Shepard mused aloud as he took in the room. "Wonder why they never came in here."

"No one was in here when it started, I think," Tali answered him in a subdued voice. "And afterwards, I doubt they had time."

"Doesn't matter," Wrex grunted firmly. "Let's just blow this thing and get out of here."

"We cannot," Legion countered smoothly.

Shepard turned to the geth with a puzzled look. "Why not?"

Legion's eye narrowed slightly. "Detonation of the neutron purge is ill advised; the rachni have left the area. It is probable they are still near the tram station. We must lure them here before detonation."

"Damnit," Ashley cursed loudly. "How are we gonna do that?"

"I may have an idea," Tali said, her voice distracted. Everyone in the squad immediately turned to her, but the quarian ignored them all in favor of playing with her omnitool. She tapped out a long sequence on the device, nodded sharply once and looked up. "Done!" she chirped, only to falter as she realized she was the focus of everyone's attention. She rallied quickly however and continued, holding up her omnitool for their inspection. "I've rigged up a program on my omnitool to create a 'noise bomb', almost like that cryo grenade Jondum used on Feros. If the rachni were attracted to the siren on the tram, dropping something even louder into the ventilation down here should bring them running."

"Good idea," Shepard praised the girl. The idea was crafty and actually building something like that in only a few seconds was impressive as hell. "That should get them down here for sure. Keep it contained until we're ready though." He pointed at Nihlus and Legion. "Now take those two and take a look at those controls, figure out how to activate the purge. Rig up a remote trigger or a time delay so we don't fry ourselves. Everyone else, watch their back."

The squad received his orders and settled into their tasks. For those on watch, the next few minutes passed agonizingly slowly as the trio of techies tore apart the terminal. Low muttering filled the room as they bent to their task, but it was nowhere near enough to distract any of the watchers from the fact that they were planning to draw the entire horde of rachni down on their heads. There was a billion little ways this could all go wrong, and Shepard felt as if his mind had run through every single one, and their gruesome results, by the time Tali announced that she was finished.

"How's it work?" Shepard asked immediately.

"Well, we couldn't do a remote detonator," Tali began enthusiastically. The technological puzzle seemed to have restored a spark of something she had been missing ever since she had found that asari near the entrance to the facility. "This lab is shielded against practically everything, probably as a way to contain the purge if they ever had to use it. Remote signals can't get through. We _were_ able to rig up a timer though. Once activated, we'll have 59 seconds to get out of here, and once started, we can't stop it."

The specific number she used jumped out to Shepard for two reasons. "Alright, but why 59 seconds?" he asked. "That seems a little specific, not to mention rather short."

Tali's eyes flashed behind her helmet. "It is, unfortunately," she agreed with him. "But any longer and the station's VI will disable the purge. I think it's meant to be a safety feature but I can't be sure, because whatever _bosh'tet_ programmed the thing had to have been lobotomized," Rex yipped in laughter and bumped the quarian with his shoulder, earning him a fond head scratch from the girl. She looked back to Shepard and continued. "Mira's code is... idiotic, to be diplomatic, but unless you want to give us a few days down here, we don't have any other options."

"Fine," Shepard conceded unhappily. He didn't like it, but he liked the idea of spending days down here even less. "Let's do it then. Find a vent and toss your flashbang down it. Once we can tell they're coming," he glanced over at Wrex then. "We'll need you for that, Urdnot."

The krogan nodded sharply with a muttered assent, which Shepard returned before turning back to Tali. "As soon as he calls it, start the timer and we'll bug out."

"Yes, Shepard," Tali replied as she turned around. Her eyes danced across the wall until they settled on a small grate to the ventilation system. "Perfect," she said and practically skipped over. A quick tug pulled the grate out of the way and her other arm pointed down into the hole. Her omnitool flared to life and spat a glob of gently glowing orange into the vent.

Almost immediately, an ear-piercing wail filled the room. The sudden wave of sound hit Shepard in the chest, almost like a physical blow. He had never before been so thankful for the sound-protection systems in his armor. The sound pulsed and beat in the air like a living thing, rising and falling in a regular pattern that Shepard unconsciously found his heart falling into sync with. It was disconcerting on several levels.

An interminable few seconds later, the sound died as abruptly as it had come. Nearly the same instant, Wrex spoke up. "They're on the way." Nihlus nodded sharply and slapped a hand on the terminal. A wave of barely-noticeable tension flooded out of the turian's body with the motion and he flashed a hand in a gesture of success.

"Time to get out of here," Shepard declared, even as he opened his comm to the _Normandy_. "EDI, we need a portal to the _Normandy_," he declared firmly.

Nothing happened for multiple seconds.

"EDI!" he barked into the comm, a sudden sense of nervous foreboding settling over him. "Do you read me?"

Silence met his request. "Uh, Shepard?" Tali ventured nervously. The mix of resignation, fear and implied insult in her tone made the bottom of his stomach drop out. "Do you remember when I said this lab was shielded?"

Ashley summarized his response to that perfectly with a loud groan and a cry of, "Well, fuck."

"Okay," Shepard said with a trace of nervous desperation. Don't panic, he told himself. There's still another option. A bad one, he conceded to the aggravating part of his mind that was determined to make him curl up in a corner and cry, but it was the only one they had. "Time for Plan B."

What's Plan B?" Tali asked, her voice both worried and resigned.

"Run like hell," Ashley cut in firmly.

Shepard jerked his head in a stiff nod and took over the explanation. "The elevator shaft is still open, and since we could call EDI up there, the top of it is beyond the shielding. We just need to get there."

"You're giving us forty-five seconds to charge through a rachni horde and climb out of a hundred meter hole," Wrex pointed out reasonably, his tone belied by the feral smile on his face. He slapped the activator plate and the door slid open. Shepard damn near felt his heart stop as he beheld what had happened while they were in the control room. Rachni filled the bio lab, boiling out of the ventilation and scurrying along the walls and ceiling like demented spiders. The sound of the door opening grabbed their attention and, as one, the rachni charged at them in a tidal wave of chitin and acid. Wrex just laughed fiercely, leashed bloodlust thick in his voice. "You take us to the nicest places, Carnifex!"

"Shut up and run!" he barked in response, shoving the krogan forward. "Make a path, I've got your back!"

Wrex turned the shove into a sprint and bellowed an ear-splitting war cry. He stampeded across the room, riot shield held before him and streamers of blue fire bursting out of his skin. A series of biotic explosions rocketed across the ground, plowing into the wave of rachni and tossing the enormous animals aside like they were made of paper.

Shepard forced his mind away from his worries, his fears, his guilt, any and everything that would keep any of his soldiers from getting to the top of that elevator. Now was not the time for second guessing. There was only the goal and the obstacles in the way. He nodded sharply to himself. Time to do what he did best.

Anger exploded in his chest, rushing in to fill the void and fed by the memory of his fears and frustrations, turning into a seething fury that he embraced wholeheartedly. A feral snarl tore from his throat and that strange, superhuman part of himself took his rage and transformed it into awesome power. A thick purple haze settled over the room as he brought a telekinetic field to bear.

Streamers of acid were grabbed in mid-flight and scattered to the winds, splashing uselessly against the ground or even into the tightly-packed ranks of the frenzied rachni. Deep, spluttering hissing could be heard as the acid chewed through metal, chitin and flesh alike and filled the room with thin, acrid smoke.

The chittering cries of shock and pain were music to Shepard's ears. Even more so when the squad behind him added their own contributions. Blazing plasma tore into the rachni with explosive force, indiscriminately shredding the bugs into limp piles of shredded chitin and steaming meat. Rachni died in droves before the squad's charge.

But for every bug that fell, half a dozen seemed to take its place, mindlessly charging over, and sometimes even through, their dead to get at the fleeing squad. It was madness, and it was slowing them down.

Despite his best efforts, Wrex was being overwhelmed by bodies. Every rachni trampled tied up his feet, every bug thrown stole his concentration, and every body left broken and steaming pulled his gun away from another rachni menacing his other side. There were just too many of them to keep up the pace.

Their breakneck charge faltered as the rachni enveloped them, circling around to press against the rear guard. Nihlus and Tali whirled around and the air was filled with thunder and a storm of flechettes, slamming through chitin with ease and tearing great gouges out of the first wave of attackers. Insectile bodies fell to the ground and formed their own bulwark that brought the rachni surge from behind to a temporary halt.

"30 seconds!" Tali yelled over her shoulder. "Keep moving!"

"I'm trying!" Wrex bellowed back, punctuating his statement with a biotically enhanced backhand that threw gallons of dark liquid flecked with small shards of chitin flying through the air. Another rachni took the opportunity to throw itself at his back, but a focused lance of purple energy speared it through the middle and carried it clear of the krogan.

The struck rachni careened into its fellows, bowling over those it hit, sending them falling into their neighbors in an almost-comical domino effect that left a dozen of the creatures sprawled across the floor. Shepard loosed a shout of triumph tinged with no small amount of bloodlust. Seeing these things die was unspeakably satisfying. Such efforts weren't going to get anyone out of this hellhole though. He'd have to do something new and drastic. He really hoped it didn't give him an aneurysm.

"Urdnot! Get down!" he bellowed a moment later. The krogan complied instantly, crouching as close as possible to the bloodstained floor without a word of protest. The rachni, sensing weakness, redoubled their efforts, but Shepard was having none of that.

Twisting streamers of purple light burst from the commander and shot over Wrex's back in a deadly spear. The entwined streams of psionic energy spun around each other into a tight piercing drill that slammed into the insectile horde at chest height. The wet crunch of impact underlined Shepard's roar of triumph. The rachni menacing Wrex burst like a struck melon, throwing thick sludge of rachni offal over everything in sight. Pieces of chitin flew through the air in a glittering blizzard turned hellish by the lab's deep red lights. Panicked screeching rang through the room as the drill continued on, tearing a perfect line straight through the rachni all the way to the elevator shaft.

The drill hit the rear of the shaft and exploded violently, peppering the rear of the rachni horde with enormous pieces of shrapnel. For the first time, the surviving rachni seemed uncertain, hesitant to attack. Shepard failed entirely to notice it though, as his vision swam wildly and the floor dropped out from under his feet. He stumbled slightly, only to find Tali under his arm and taking his weight. "Thanks," he mumbled, letting the quarian drag him along while he recovered.

Wrex shot back to his feet and, backed by deadly volleys of plasma fire, resumed his charge. The krogan barrelled across the remaining space to the elevator before the rachni had the chance to recover their nerve. His heavy foot falls crunched pieces of rachni underfoot and forced aside anything too big to step on, ploughing a path for the smaller beings behind him to follow.

He spun around when he reached the elevator and brought his weapon to bear. Heavy plasma fire rained into the horde, keeping the bugs at bay as the squad clambered onto the elevator behind him. It could only work for so long however, and the rachni recovered their nerve as Ashley, the last of the squad, pulled herself into the shaft. Nihlus and Legion took over the job of covering fire, allowing Wrex to haul himself up beside them.

As soon as the krogan had climbed up, Shepard forced through his dizziness and yanked a grenade off his belt before flicking it through the small opening, hoping to buy a bit more time. The sharp bang of detonation rang out as he turned to face the rest of the squad. "Use your eezo," he barked, not even bothering to go for the comm. They didn't have the time to wait for a portal. His next orders came out in a hurried, slurred rush. "We're climbin'! Ash, take Rex. Legion with me on Urdnot. Tali, Nihlus."

The quarian grabbed Nihlus tightly as the telltale blue aura of the mass effect burst from his armor. She glanced up at the distant glimmer of light from the hallway so far above. "It's too far!" she cried. "My grapple won't reach!"

Shepard scowled. That wasn't going to happen. Renewed anger burst from him at even considering the possibility, temporarily piercing the fuzziness of his thoughts with ease. Before he could think about it any further, he forced his powers to cooperate and grabbed the pair in a purple fist. Tali shrieked as they were catapulted upward, but retained enough presence of mind to fire her grapple the instant she got into range. The grapple quickly pulled taut and she swung into the wall of the shaft, where both she and Nihlus caught the impact with their legs before rushing up the wall with the aid of the grapple's winch.

The rest of the squad rocketed past them an instant later, archangel packs carrying them in a furious rush for the exit. Shepard followed Ashley through the opening and set down lightly on the floor of the original hallway. His grip on Legion and Wrex disengaged instantly and he spun back to the opening, just in time to see Tali and Nihlus climbing over the lip. He rushed over to help and blew out a noisy breath of relief, until movement at the base of the shaft caught his eye. Rachni were swarming through the broken door and rushing up the sheer walls like it was flat ground.

"Fuck!" he cried, his eyes wide. He grabbed both of the aliens on the lip and hauled them into the hallway. "We gotta run!"

"Two seconds!" Tali shot back as she was thrown to the floor of the shaft. "No time!"

Shepard opened his mouth to retort, but in the same instant, a furious torrent of blinding white fire roared through the shaft not even a full meter away. He instinctively threw himself away and landed on his back. He could only watch in awe as white flames licked from the top of the opening and traced blinding patterns across the ceiling before being sucked back into the shaft. It lasted for only the briefest of instants, but to Shepard it seemed to stretch into eternity.

The white fire died and he let his head fell back to the floor with a thud. Silence reigned for several seconds, before his tired voice filled the hallway. "Anyone hurt?"

"Owwww," Tali groaned in answer. His head rolled over toward her, to see her gingerly moving her arm, testing the movement of her shoulder. She noticed him looking and glared at him. "You're a dick, Shepard."

He snorted quietly. "At least you got out."

"You could ha-" she began crossly, only to be cut off as EDI's voice crackled over the comm.

"Commander, I lost your signal for several minutes. Are you in need of assistance?"

Shepard spluttered briefly, before he started chuckling. The sudden loss of adrenaline made everything hilarious, and he simply could not stop laughing. His chuckles quickly built up steam, turning into a full belly, manic laugh in a matter of seconds. His sudden bout of manic hysteria earned him several strange looks from the squad, but he just shook his head at them. He was way too happy to be alive to care about his dignity.

"Was it something I said?" EDI asked, her voice bewildered. Her only answer was even stronger laughter.

* * *

"The rachni are all dead now right?" Ashley asked as they rounded another corner in the confusing maze of hallways. Shepard grunted an affirmative, but didn't otherwise respond. She hissed a quiet breath then pointedly wondered aloud, "Then remind me, why are we doing this instead of, oh I don't know, getting on the _Normandy_ and nuking this place from orbit?"

Shepard distantly wished he could take off his helmet and massage the bridge of his nose. His head was killing him, even through the handful of painkillers he'd taken, and the gunnery chief's whining wasn't helping matters. "Benezia is still our only lead on Saren, and she's in here somewhere," he said tiredly. His frustration leaked into his voice and he glared at Williams. "Not to mention the rachni queen that started this whole mess. We're going to find them."

She raised her hands in surrender. "It's your call, Commander, but it would be a hell of a lot easier to sift through the rubble afterwards." She snorted. "It's not like they deserve any less."

"And then we're back at square one with Saren," he snapped at her. His thoughts descended into a stream of virulent cursing at the woman's stubbornness, his headache, the lights of the hallway, his headache, the steady dripping he could just barely hear, and, just for good measure, his headache. Externally, he just sighed heavily. "Look, just find the stupid bitch so we can get out of here, alright?"

"Al- whoa," Ashley said, her words turning into a surprised yelp as the squad rounded the next corner. "Damn, those chryssalid-wannabes really got around."

Shepard silently agreed with a grimace. Several meters down the hall, right as it opened into a fairly large room, stood a makeshift barricade, comprised of a metal bookshelf tipped onto its side and wedged into a hallway over a foot too narrow and just barely tall enough to properly accommodate it. And it was clear, even from a distance, that the rachni had already been through here.

Ragged holes, obviously the work of rachni acid, could be seen in a number of places on the bookshelf. A turian body, wearing the armor of the security forces, lay draped on its chest over the top of the barricade, blue blood slowly dripping from its severed neck to splash on an asari corpse stretched out below. The asari, clad in a skinsuit of a design Shepard had never seen before, lay in an enormous puddle of half-congealed blue and purple blood. Both of her legs and one arm were simply gone, and her stomach had been violently torn open by large, mindlessly hungry bites. Glazed eyes stared sightlessly out of the gore, an expression of shock, pain, and fear permanently etched into her face.

"I recognize that armor," Nihlus said as they approached. He stepped ahead of the rest of the group, stopping just at the edge of the pool of blood and offal, where he crouched down to peer intently at the asari. "She was a commando."

"They wouldn't have paid an asari commando to sit around as a security guard," Wrex rumbled as he came up beside Nihlus. "This is one of Benezia's."

"Agreed," Shepard said quietly. He ignored the throbbing in his temples and tried to force his thoughts to cooperate. This was the first real sign of Benezia's presence since the geth at the front door. What did it mean?

He didn't realize he had given voice to the question until Legion answered him. "It is unlikely for a high-value person such as an asari matriarch to separate from her guards in a time of crisis. It is probable that Matriarch Benezia is nearby."

Shepard grimaced and cursed his headache again. He really should have been able to see that immediately. "Agreed," he said again, in a frustrated tone. His gaze bounced from the asari to the barricade beyond her. "We need to get through this thing and start looking for clues. Keep the noise down though. If Benezia survived, I don't want her knowing we're coming."

"Ten credits says she's been watching us through the security system since the tram station," Ashley groused under her breath.

Shepard shot her an arch look. "I would imagine someone in a building overrun by alien killing machines would have bigger things to worry about," he pointed out. "And if she has, there's not much we can do about it." He turned to Wrex. "Think you can get this out of the way without making enough noise to wake the dead?"

Wrex snorted in amusement. "Quaint saying," he said with a half-laugh. He gave the bookshelf a speculative glance and shook his head. "That thing isn't moving unless you want to take the walls out with it," he announced at length. He pointedly eyed the small opening between the bookshelf and the ceiling. "And I'm not going to fit through that."

"Damnit," Shepard sighed. There was only one other option. He pulled out his pistol and deftly swapped it over to torch mode. "Needs must then," he said as he gingerly stepped into the puddle of blood. He pulled the turian off the barricade and set the body lightly on the ground before turning back to the bookshelf. His pistol pressed against the left edge of the metal barrier and began the noisy process of cutting through it. "Rex, get the other side. And somebody hold this thing up so it doesn't fall when we're done."

The dog yipped an affirmative and trotted over to the bookshelf, where he jumped up onto his hind legs and replicated Shepard's efforts on the far side of the barrier. The hall filled with the crackling of plasma searing perfect holes straight through the battered metal as Wrex stepped in to the center, grabbing a steady hold on the middle portion of the bookshelf as its supports were cut away. In a matter of seconds, the crackle of seared metal was replaced by the hiss of steam as the torches reached the last two inches. Blue and purple blood was evaporated instantly, boiled away by the superheated plasma in a fraction of a second.

Several seconds of furious cutting later, Shepard's torch had reached the floor. He pulled the device out of the blood and released the trigger, allowing the blinding flare of plasma to die off. A deft motion returned the thing back to pistol mode and stored it in its holster on his thigh. Rex stepped back nearly the same instant the gun settled back into its place and Shepard nodded at the krogan.

Synthetic muscle along the krogan's back flexed and he easily lifted the severed section of sturdy bookshelf into the air. The puddle of blood at his feet immediately rushed through the new opening, spreading out of Shepard's sight and into the room beyond. Wrex stomped through the opening and lightly set the hunk of metal off to the side before stepping out of the way and granting Shepard his first unimpeded view of the inside.

"Joy," he drawled, simply unable to muster the disgust he thought he should have been feeling. He'd just seen this too many times today, he supposed. Then again, it wasn't like he had expected anything different. "Another roomful of corpses. Today just keeps getting better."

He shook his head and walked into the middle of the carnage. The room was a fairly good size, easily twenty meters across and half again that wide, with a pair of low benches that ran the length of the room, from a meter ahead of Shepard's feet, all the way to a closed and sealed door on the far side. Blood covered nearly every surface of the room, pouring out of the two score bodies that had been so messily slain. Salarian and asari, most in labcoats or other civilian dress, had been viciously cut down all across the room, but the highest concentration by far was the far left corner, where a veritable mound of corpses had formed. It was as if the rachni had herded them all there before cutting them down. Shepard scowled. That was probably exactly what had happened.

To his right, another hallway entered the room, but the barricade blocking it, an upturned desk in this case, had been overrun. A pair of asari commandos lay sprawled out behind the half-melted remains of the desk, enormous portions of their armor and skin simply gone, burned away by rachni acid.

Behind them lay the broken remains of a security force. A turian in white armor, one hand completely gone while the other clutched a melted rifle in the tight grip of rigor mortis, had been impaled through the chest and held above the floor by a broken shard of the desk, like a sick perversion of an entymological display. Thick blue blood dripped down the meter long spike to pool on the floor, mixing freely with the puddles formed by the ten or so turian and asari bodies strewn around him.

Shepard shot a look at the squad as they trickled through the opening behind him and waved a hand obliquely at the bodies of the asari commandos. "Benezia was in here, probably after they fortified," he said. "Wrex, Nihlus, check if she's in the pile. Legion, with me. Let's see if the commandos have any clues. The rest of you, keep an eye out. Odds are good at least a few rachni didn't get to the basement in time and survived the purge. I don't want them or Benezia able to sneak up on us."

Acknowledgements rang out and the squad bent to their assigned tasks. Shepard and Legion each took one of the asari commandos and rifled through their bodies, searching for anything that might give them a clue to Benezia's location. Unfortunately, Shepard's search turned up nothing but an omnitool that had taken a bath in acid. He snorted in disgust and threw the asari's arm away from him before turning to the geth. "Find anything?"

Legion looked up from his asari and let the active omnitool on her arm fade. His head flaps narrowed slightly and he spoke. "Matriarch Benezia was contacted by this user approximately twenty hours ago. We believe it was a warning that the fortifications had been breached." The geth pointed at the door at the rear of the room. "We judge it likely Benezia is in the laboratory behind that door."

"Good job," Shepard said with a breath of relief. "Is there any word on her condition."

"No."

Shepard nodded and stood up. "Alright, we've got a lead," Shepard announced, catching the squad's attention. Nihlus gratefully shot away from the pile of corpses and turned his attention fully on Shepard. Wrex snorted lightly, but didn't say anything, so Shepard continued. "Legion and Tali, get that door open. We're pretty sure Benezia's hiding or dead somewhere behind it. I want a hostile breach as soon as the door's unlocked. Rex and Urdnot up front, Nihlus and Tali behind. Anything that's not Benezia is dead. Any questions?"

There were none. "Right. Let's get to it then," he ordered. Tali and Legion threw themselves at the door's controls while the rest of the squad pulled into a practiced breaching formation. The weight of his plasma sniper was comforting to Shepard as he braced it against his shoulder. His head throbbed quietly, but he ignored it with the ease of long practice. They were so close to finally be doing with this shit. He wasn't about to let a stupid headache stop him now.

A few seconds later, the hologram on the door flickered and turned green and Tali flashed a thumbs up at Shepard. He raised three fingers and slowly pulled them down one by one. As the last finger pulled back into his fist, the door shot open and the squad rushed through.

The first thing Shepard noticed upon moving through the door was the sudden and complete disappearance of his headache. In its place came a bizarre feeling of disconnect, as if there was an infinitesimal delay between thought and action. The abrupt change surprised the hell out of him, enough so that he faltered briefly in mid-run, his body automatically reacting to the unexpected sensation. He stumbled slightly and nearly fell, only just catching himself with one hand on the nearby wall.

The second thing he noticed was the bizarre structure of the room itself. Four large, suspended platforms, one in each corner of the room, comprised the lion's share of the room's available space. Narrow walkways made a circuit around the room, or at least as much of it as he could see, linking all four platforms together. The walkway directly ahead of him led up a short flight of stairs and went level for several meters before descending to the platform directly opposite. Roughly halfway across this walkway, a fifth platform had been erected, stretching out toward the center of the rom. Enormous buttresses jutted out from underneath the platforms, forming a truncated pyramid mere feet from the edge of the fifth platform that both supported the roof and held aloft an enormous, mostly-transparent box of sturdy plastic and metal. Something big, purple, and moving was held in the box, but Shepard couldn't see it well enough to identify it.

And he didn't have the chance to look further as he noticed the third thing in the room. Which in retrospect, he thought, should really have been the first. Immediately in front of him, a pair of asari commandos crouched behind a low crate, only their heads and guns visible over the makeshift cover. Behind them, at the top the stairs to the walkway, a geth trooper was covering the door, and in the far corner in the same direction, another commando and trooper, this one armed with a sniper rifle, were doing the same. The walkway to his right had another trooper blocking the route and two commandos on the far platform. A quick glance up revealed at least two hoppers hanging from the buttresses, and god only knew how many more where he couldn't see.

A virulent oath ripped through his thoughts, cursing that brief moment of distraction for everything he was worth. Fortunately for his continued survival however, the rest of the squad was much more on the ball.

Even as Shepard was recognizing the threat, the synthetic members of the team had catapulted into action. A sharp whine filled the air as Legion's archangel pack roared to life, throwing the geth up into the rafters. At the same time, Rex took off like a shot, throwing himself into a shoulder tackle against the crate the commandos sheltered behind. Half a metric ton of cyberdog in a full sprint proved more than a match for the crate and it went sailing through the air. One of the asari managed to throw herself over it, but the other was still recovering from the surprise of their sudden entry. The crate tumbled into her and threw her to the floor, where it bounced once off her legs and rolled right over her. A sickening crack sounded as it struck her head on its second bounce and slammed to a stop against the railing of the platform, the head and shoulders of the limp asari pinned beneath it.

The second commando flared with biotic power, only to be intercepted by a storm of vahlenite flechettes. Deadly shards of the wonder metal slammed into her chest, ripping through her shields with ease. A sick tearing and crunching noise filled the platform, even as thick purple blood was thrown through the air in an arterial geyser. Tali dismissed her target in nearly the same instant and vanished from conventional sight in an electric flitter. Shepard could only follow her spin to the right because of his hud.

Unfortunately, the element of surprise only works so well against synthetic enemies. Benezia's geth opened fire in almost the same heartbeat as the squad, and the air above the small platform was suddenly full of bullets. Sparks flew as supersonic particles pinged off the squad's armor, driving them into cover.

"Williams!" Shepard barked, throwing himself under the dubious shelter of the platform's right-side railing. "Get up there and help Legion! Urdnot, get her an opening!"

Ashley nodded sharply and triggered her archangel pack. Another sharp whine filled the room as she rose into the air. At the same time, Wrex shot to his full height, bellowing an ear-splitting warcry. The missile batteries on his shoulders came to life, spitting finger-sized missiles on chaotically twisting courses that all eventually rained down on an enormous biotic barrier that sprang up to cover the entire left side of the room. Smoke, fire and chaos filled the air, and while the missiles hadn't killed anything, they'd done their job. The hostiles in that portion of the room had gone temporarily quiet. Then Wrex repeated his cry and flung himself into the chaos, the squad's SHIV on his heels. Nothing over there was going to be bothering Ashley. Now it was Shepard's turn.

The commander threw himself to his feet and turned to face the rightmost platform. He reached deep inside himself, to that place of roiling power that had been alongside him for well over a decade, ever since that hell that Mindoir had become. He reached out for his power, his mind already bent to the task of shaping it to his will, but unlike every other time before, he was answered by silence. A beat of raw shock passed as he realized what had happened. His psionics were gone.

His mind screeched to a halt with that realization. Raw, animal panic rushed to the forefront of his thoughts, tripping every single one of his physiological stress responses at once. His mind raced at a million lightyears a second, but couldn't form a single coherent thought. His psionics were gone. Everything else was eclipsed by that one, inescapable fact.

That was impossible! Nobody even knew what psionics really were, let alone how they could be stopped. How the f-

A furious voice suddenly cut into his thoughts. "Shepard!" Williams barked as she dodged away from the focused fire of nearly a third of the room.

He started violently, forcing himself to think about it later. He could have a breakdown on his own time. "My psionics are gone!" he called, even as he reseated his rifle on his shoulder. Plasma lanced through the air, crossing the space between platforms in a heartbeat and slamming into an asari surrounded in biotic light. The reinforced shields proved enough to keep the blow from being instantly fatal, but even it could not protect her from all of the heat. A small plume of purple-tinged steam shot out into the air as the outermost layer of flesh on her arms boiled away.

"What?!" both Nihlus and Williams demanded at the same time. The gunnery chief's voice cut off with a yelp of surprise however, as biotic power grabbed her in its tight embrace. Without warning, she was catapulted through the air and into the nearest wall, where she hit with a loud crash. She bounced off the wall and fell out of sight to the floor below, striking hard on the edge of one of the walkways as she went.

"Ashley!" Shepard yelled wildly. Cursing himself for a dozen different kinds of idiot, his eyes immediately sought out the one responsible. Atop the central platform, a wizened asari, more wrinkled and ancient than any he had ever seen and wearing excessively formal robes and a ridiculous head piece, was using one hand to maintain a barrier capable of holding off Urdnot Wrex, while the other snaked around in chaotic patterns. Corpses, both asari and geth, littered the platform around her feet, proof of the deadly force she was holding back so well.

Biotics flared on the central platform as Wrex and the asari, Benezia he assumed, dueled. There was no other word for it. Benezia's free hand would weave a motion and biotic light burst in the air, only for Wrex to twitch his head or twist his shoulders and the light would be dispersed. Then Wrex would go on the offensive with a rain of plasma and reptilian fury, only to be forced to disengage as Benezia countered.

It was an intricate and awe-inspiring sight, and it filled Shepard with a seething rage. He was going to take what they needed from that bitch and then he was going to kill her. "Nihlus, Tali, clear the right!" he snapped as he tore a grenade from his belt and whipped it over to the platform. "Loop around and support Legion!"

"On it," Nihlus said and threw himself out onto the walkway. The grenade bought him a few precious seconds, and his riot shield bought him the rest. The turian Spectre threw himself into a running leap that hit the injured commando feet first, throwing her to her back underneath him. His mass effect module was turned on in the middle of the fall, causing her chest to burst messily under his now-enormous weight and throwing purple blood through the air. It doused the asari's companion, as well as the indistinct shape beside her. The commando's eyes went wide and she moved to attack, only for Tali's alloy cannon to roar and tear off her head in a shower of metallic death.

The pair turned their attention to the ceiling and Shepard followed their gaze with a brief glance. Legion was holding his own against the hoppers, but judging by the splattering of white on his armor, it wouldn't last much longer.

"Legion, down!" Tali yelled, and the geth immediately complied. Legion dropped like a rock, luring the hoppers down with him, and Shepard dismissed them all from his mind; they'd be fine. He had a matriarch to capture.

Neither Wrex nor Benezia had made any headway against each other, and it didn't look like they were going to anytime soon. Shepard's lips twitched into a feral grin. It was time to change that.

A flurry of plasma blasts shot across the intervening space in a fraction of a second, each one slamming into Benezia's barrier with the explosive force of a grenade. Through his scope, Shepard could see the matriarch's eyes go wide and his grin widened, only to devolve into a yelp of shock as her free hand shot in his direction thrice without her looking away from the ancient krogan she faced.

The next thing Shepard knew, he was tumbling uncontrollably through the air. The room spun crazily in his view and, when combined with the unmistakable sensation of motion, the dizzying spectacle threatened to bring up his gorge. Until he stopped, that is.

He slammed back first and upside down into something hard and unyielding before he flipped over and was sprawled on his chest. A yelp of pain escaped him from the impact as fierce agony boiled up from the back of his chest, forcing his eyes closed. He sighed internally. He knew that pain. Cracked ribs were never fun.

He groaned quietly and climbed to his knees, just in time for a horse to kick him in the chest. Nonsensical words of surprise washed over him as he was thrown through the air yet again. His feet caught on something and sent him spinning once more until he hit the ground with another spike of terrible agony. His mind went white with the pain and simply shut down.

When his senses returned, two seconds or two millenia later, he could not tell, all he could see was a small, slowly spinning monolith in the dead center of the room. Intricate patterns had been traced in gently glowing blue lines all along the exterior of the misshapen pyramid and with every rotation, Shepard felt a faint pulse of something in the deepest recesses of his mind.

This thing is dangerous, Shepard concluded.

"You can say that again," a tired voice suddenly cut into his thoughts, and let him know he voiced the thought aloud. Shepard jumped in surprise, and cried out as the motion jostled his ribs. "Easy Skipper," the voice said again, and he could feel hands rolling him onto his side. A moment later, there was a sharp pain before a wave of blessed relief rushed through him. He exhaled noisily and opened his eyes to find Ashley kneeling beside him. "That should get you walking." She gestured vaguely at the elevated platforms some ten meters overhead. Bright flashes of light strobed from the platforms overhead, casting the roof in deadly shadows. "We need to get back up there and take down Benezia."

Shepard nodded distractedly, his attention once more captured by the spinning monolith. "I, I think this is the thing blocking my psionics," he said, giving voice to the terrible certainty he felt within him. "We gotta destroy it first."

She nodded. "Fine by me. Got any more grenades?"

Shepard laughed sharply, only to wheeze as a twinge of pain burst through the anaesthetic. "I like the way you think," he said, pulling his last grenade from his belt. A flick of his hand armed the grenade and he nodded at the chief. "Payback time," he said simply.

"Get in line," Ashley countered, her voice angry. Her archangel pack coughed to life a second later and she hovered a few feet off the ground.

"First come, first served," Shepard retorted, activating his own pack. He tossed the grenade at the monolith and they took off into the air. Shepard and Ashley had just reached the level of the central platform when the grenade exploded with a furious roar. Bright blue fire rushed through the air in a wave, harmlessly passing through everything in its path.

And in its wake, Shepard felt revitalized. An intoxicating rush of power flooded his mind, that forlorn piece of his soul waking up at long last. It took him a minute to realize it, but he had been laughing madly since the wave passed. His thoughts could once again reach out and twist reality to his whims. It was exhilarating. It was intoxicating. He felt like a god.

Which made it even worse when he was struck by a wave of debilitating terror. Raw, seething rage tinged by fathomless sorrow and an unending love filled the air, all twisted together into a murderous desire that gave a booming resonance to the cry that echoed through his mind.

**DIE!**

The box in the middle of the room exploded in a violent surge of purple light. Before anyone could react, the thing inside it was among them. An enormous purple rachni, six meters tall at least, smashed through Benezia's barrier like it wasn't even there. The matriarch had just enough time to scream before the rachni's jaws closed around her with a sickening crunch. It bit down once and the matriarch's lower body collapsed to the platform with a wet thud. The rachni pulled back its head and screeched loudly, a trilling call of pain, grief and satisfied vengeance.

Then it turned to look directly at Shepard.

Immediately, the squad responded to the implied threat like the well-oiled machine of war that they were. Plasma flew thick in the air, wave after wave roaring across space toward the gigantic rachni from nearly every direction. It trilled once and every single shot slammed to a halt in mid-air, held aloft by a gently rippling wall of psionic light. Shepard's eyes went wide. He knew what came next.

"Duck and cover!" he snapped, even as he cut the power to his archangel pack. The squad scrambled to comply, throwing themselves down into whatever cover they could find as he fell. His last sight of the platform was every single one of the projectiles held in the rachni's grip being flung straight up.

The rounds exploded harmlessly against the ceiling with a discordant echo of light and sound. Choking dust was thrown down by the explosions, filling the air with an almost impenetrable grey-black fog. The squad's markers on his hud scattered as the dust cloud filled the air, each scrambling to not fall victim to the oversized insect.

Shepard's pack kicked back on a beat later and arrested his fall. "Sitrep," he whispered over the squad's comms. "Anyone hurt?" A chorus of quiet negatives came back in response, so he continued. "Good. We need to take this thing out. Line up a shot on the platform. I'll verify it's there. Attack on my signal."

Acknowledgements of his orders came quick in rapid succession, so, with a nod and a sensation of imminent doom, he slowly brought himself back up to the level of the platform and straight into the heart of the dust cloud. The tension ratcheted up with every second that passed with no sign of the rachni. Nervous sweat beaded inside his armor and he couldn't help the tightening of his grip on his rifle. With a single thought, psionic power thrummed within him, straining at its leash to obey his will.

As if that was a signal, foreign thoughts suddenly invaded his mind. Bizarre images with colors he had never seen, scents he had no words to describe, even sounds that were beyond his comprehension crashed into his thoughts. Thoughts not his own raced through his mind in something both so much more and so much less than communication. Rage at the violation forced its way into his thoughts. It was like the Thorian all over again.

The tide of foreign thoughts ended as abruptly as it began, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. Without consciously noticing it, his archangel pack had died, dropping him onto the central platform with a solid thud. He caught himself on one knee and looked up, just in time to see the twenty foot tall rachni loom out of the dust.

His mouth went dry and he threw himself backward, raising his rifle even as the foreign mind touched his once again. This time however, it was infinitely more gentle. A low, almost musical trill echoed through his thoughts and was somehow understood as words.

"You who can sing," it said, at once giddy and apprehensive. "You who have freed us. You who carry the mark of Those Who Came Before, yet bear not their taint. We mean you no harm."

"Wh-what?" Shepard said aloud, stumbling over his voice in surprise.

The rachni emerged from the swiftly settling dust once more, coming to a stop mere feet from Shepard. The rachni's enormous head, still dripping with Benezia's blood, swung down beside him and a trio of eyes stared directly into his soul. "We apologize," it said haltingly. Sorrow and regret pulsed through the music in his mind. Its legs folded beneath it and it lay down as low as it could beside him. "Your musics are... limited. We reached too far."

Shepard returned the bug's gaze helplessly. "What are you?" he whispered.

"We are rachni," it answered simply. "We are the mother."

Holy crap, Shepard thought, the queen. "That explains a hell of a lot," he muttered to himself with a shake of his head. He slowly, cautiously lowered his rifle. "What do you want?"

"We want to survive," she said. Her thoughts drifted through his mind and he could sense her sincerity. "We want our children to grow and prosper. You have freed us. We want to give gratitude, not violence."

Suddenly, it surged to its feet and whirled around. A psionic shield sprang to life inches ahead of a volley of plasma fire. Shepard's eyes tracked the fire back through the mostly clear dust to find Wrex's heavy plasma roaring with destructive power. The rachni queen chittered quietly and flashed with psionic power, slapping the gun out of the krogan's hands.

She hissed angrily at him, but made no further moves, so when Wrex's biotics burst to life, Shepard threw himself between them. "Stand down!" he barked as authoritatively as he could. "She's friendly!"

"What?!" Wrex demanded angrily, followed half a second later by the rest of the squad. The krogan's tone dripped with derision as he continued. "Have you lost your mind?!"

"I said, stand down!" he repeated himself, glaring at the krogan. "She wants to talk, and she hasn't hurt any of us."

"Need I remind you, Commander," Nihlus' voice interjected. "Her children have slaughtered every living thing in this facility, and her ancestors are responsible for trillions of deaths." He paused a beat, then continued in a skeptical tone. "And how is she even talking to you?"

"She's a psionic," Shepard countered heatedly. "And if she doesn't have a damn good reason for this mess, then I'll be right there with you. But not until I hear what she has to say." His glare bounced between the two, ignoring the rest of the group as they cautiously complied with his orders. His voice turned firm and unyielding, demanding unswerving obedience from all who heard it. "Keep your guns ready, but do _not_ fire until I give you the go ahead. Am I understood?"

"Fine," Wrex bit out angrily. He kicked the banister in front of him and severely dented the metal before picking up his heavy plasma and training it on the queen. "But the _second _she tries anything, she's dead."

The commander turned his glare on Nihlus, who exhaled noisily but eventually nodded his acceptance. He blew out a low sigh of relief. Maybe now he could get some answers.

He turned around to face the rachni queen, fighting down the sudden, instinctual surge of fear as he found himself eye level with her jaws. "Alright," he said a moment later. "Talk, and include the rest of my people."

The queen's eyes flashed purple for the briefest second before she answered. "We cannot." Her touch on his mind was tinged with apology. "They do not sing."

"What do you mean, 'sing'?" he asked, his brows furrowed.

"Their music is flat," she replied. "Colorless. Their minds are closed to us."

"Psionics," Shepard breathed in surprised realization. "You can only communicate with psionics."

The queen's mental song took on an approving chirp. "Yes."

Shepard frowned. "Is there any way for you to speak?" he asked. "Form words that they can understand?"

The queen was silent for several seconds. "Yes," she said calmly. A sudden movement from the corner of his eye prompted Shepard to look down, and he jumped back in surprise.

One of the dead asari on the platform was climbing to her feet, a dim psionic halo illuminating her form. Shepard could only watch in shock as the corpse walked over beside the queen and began to speak in a halting, disjointed voice, echoing the words of the queen's harmony in Shepard's mind. "Is this acceptable?"

Shepard's jaw closed with an audible clack and he swallowed heavily. "Yes," he said at length. "That will do."

"_Keelah_," Tali breathed quietly. Her alloy cannon made a clatter as it fell from suddenly nerveless fingers. "Did she just- Is that-"

"This one's light has faded," the queen answered the stuttered, half-formed question. "She will be our voice. Through her, we wish to calm your fears."

"You are doing a fine job of that," Tali muttered faintly. She picked up the discarded weapon at her feet and immediately trained it on the risen asari. "The undead are fantastic for that."

"Fine," Nihlus interjected in a tight voice before anyone else could chime in. The Spectre strode briskly onto the platform and took a position beside Shepard. His alloy cannon never once wavered from the queen. "Let us talk. What happened here?"

"These needle-men wanted our children," she answered in fits and starts. "To turn them into weapons of war. Claws with no songs of their own." A tremble of fathomless fury leaked into her voice. "They took our children from us, long before they could learn to sing. They were lost to silence." The rachni's head twitched slightly in an inscrutable gesture and she hissed angrily before bowing her head. "Our elders can cope with silence, but with none to sing to them, children know only fear. Fear shattered their minds."

"How did they get loose?" Nihlus demanded.

"We do not know," the queen answered. "We have known only this cage for many cycles. The psi disrupter silenced our music."

"Speaking of," Shepard cut in smoothly, ignoring the turian's glower. He had more important questions to ask. "Do you know where they got this 'psi disruptor'?"

"They stole it," the queen answered simply. "Our mother sang of desperate hope when she placed it beside us and sent us away."

"Away?" Shepard asked with a frown. "Away from what?"

"Those Who Came Before," the queen answered, and the music in his thoughts swelled. Sorrow and anger mixed into the tune in equal measures.

"You mentioned them before," Shepard said slowly. He had a sinking feeling he knew who they were supposed to be. He took a steadying breath and asked the question whose answer he really hoped would prove him wrong. "Who were they?"

"We know not their name." Vague images flared in Shepard's mind. Distant, hazy memories of an orange sky dotted with the unmistakable shape of several spacecraft. "They came from the sky and gave us the gift of song, before they left in peace. We honored their memory and their gift."

The music abruptly turned discordant and jarring. "Then they returned. Their music was harsh and demanding." A new image surfaced then, one that Shepard couldn't possibly fail to recognize. The sky was the same burnt orange, but this time, the ethereals' Temple Ship dominated the image. Smaller craft of every description fell from the enormous vessel like fleas from a dog until their engines kicked in and they vanished into the distance. More memories followed. In his minds eye, Shepard watched as hulking mutons tore apart rachni by the dozen, an ethereal slaughtered a young queen with nothing but its mind, a wave of floaters descended upon a clutch of eggs. Even in these images, he could recognize the tactics that they had used, the framework by which they had attacked Earth. Damnit. Why did he have to be right?

Then a new series of images appeared. Rachni were captured by the dozen, drugged and dragged aboard the ethereals' vessels. "They sought to make slaves of us." The queen's words rang through his head as the images progressed. The captive rachni were subjected to unspeakable cruelties. Vivisection, amputation, exploratory surgery while aware. Queens and common rachni alike were dragged through that hell. Shepard felt his gorge rise. He always knew the ethereals did terrible things to their captives, but knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.

Finally, blessedly, the horror show came to an end. The ethereals had found what they sought, and they had released it. Purple monstrosities, just over two meters high when standing on their four pointed legs, raced through the tunnels of their forebears. Thin, powerful arms carved through chitin and flesh alike in a mad rush to kill everything in their path. Bright yellow, glowing eyes dominated a face bearing vicious mandibles that could chew through vahlenite.

Shepard's mouth went dry. Every human alive knew that image. "C-chryssalids," he choked out in surprise. "The ethereals made chryssalids from your people."

The queen's music became remorseful and slow. "If that is what you call the Abominations."

The room filled with shocked exclamations at that. "Whoa! Timeout!" Ashley said in a shell-shocked tone. "You mean to say that chryssalids used to be rachni?"

"Yes," the queen answered. The asari twitched slightly in response to the rachni's thoughts. "Those Who Came Before returned and turned our children into Abominations. We could not fight them. We were forced to flee."

"But they chased us. They could hear our music. Follow our song. We created the psi disrupter to hide our music from them. It silenced our songs and saved us from their wrath." The queen's music turned melancholy. "We could not return to our home and risk their return once more. So we traveled the stars for many, many cycles. Eventually, we discovered new lands. Places Those Who Came Before would not go. In our desperation, we took them. And unknowingly sealed our doom."

"The Rachni Wars," Nihlus breathed in realization. Shock rang thick in his tone. "You took Citadel territory to flee the Ethereals." His mandibles drew into a frown. "But if that is the case, why did you not simply ask for refuge?"

"Your kind do not sing," she answered simply. "Never had we encountered beings who could not sing." The chorus in Shepard's mind turned into a fanfare of sorrow and regret. "We believed your kind to be drones. Replaceable. Our mother sang of her regret as she sent us away."

"So that is it?" Nihlus asked, his voice furious. "Trillions dead over a misunderstanding?"

The rachni queen turned to him and bowed her head slightly. "Yes."

"What possible reason do I have to believe you?" the turian countered with a pointed shake of his alloy cannon.

"We offer only truth," the queen answered. "The choice to accept it is yours."

Nihlus was silent for a long moment. Then, with a frustrated half-yell, he swung his alloy cannon to the side and fired it one handed into the platform. An echoing boom filled the room as a small section of the platform buckled. Vahlenite flechettes tore through the thin metal with ease, leaving nothing but a ragged hole. Small pieces of shrapnel chimed quietly as they struck the floor below.

"Feel better?" Shepard asked dryly.

The Spectre sent him a withering glare. "You are insufferable at times, Commander."

"You know you love me," Shepard shot back teasingly. A beat later, he shook his head. Now wasn't the time for that. Turning back to the rachni queen, he sobered and waved a hand at Benezia's remains. "Anyway, can you tell me anything about what she was doing here?"

The music in Shepard's thoughts turned rapid and angry. "The she-witch sought information. The location of something thought lost."

"And?" Shepard prompted when she fell silent. "What was it?"

"And where is it now?" Nihlus voiced the second half of the question.

The queen eyed Shepard steadily for several seconds, and he had to fight the urge to squirm under her regard. "We propose a trade," she said at length. "The information for safe passage off of this world."

Shepard felt his brow rise under his helmet. That was unexpected. He probably should have seen it coming, but still it took him by surprise. His mind raced through possible responses.

He knew right away the queen couldn't be allowed to run free. She was simply too dangerous. The rachni had nearly eradicated the Citadel Council two millennia ago. If the queen was allowed to rebuild and turned hostile, there was no telling just how much damage she could do. The Coalition couldn't hope to stand against a species that blew through everything the Council had. It took an unending horde of doom lizards to put them down last time, and the galaxy was short on that nowadays.

But taking what she knew and killing her just didn't sit right with him. She had been nothing but cordial so far, even with good reason not to be. He simply couldn't justify throwing her into an interrogation chamber and ripping out her secrets. He glanced sidelong at her. Not to mention he wasn't completely sure he could force the issue, if it came down to it. Not without unacceptable losses at least.

Please, he thought, let her take the middle option. "Alright," he said aloud, drawing the word the word with a thoughtful lilt. "You have a deal, if you can agree to certain conditions."

The queen trilled quietly, her steady stare never wavering from him. "Speak your terms."

"First, you tell me what Benezia was looking for, right now. You can hold on to where it is until we're away from here."

The queen bobbed her head in a shallow nod of acceptance but she remained silent, waiting for the rest of the list. A minor, curious waver in her music prompted Shepard to continue. He shrugged. Fair enough. "Second, that you don't disappear."

"Explain," she said with a soft chitter.

"I," Shepard floundered briefly, struggling to phrase his next sentence diplomatically. After several seconds of failure however, he shrugged. She'd get the gist of it either way. "Well, I don't trust you," he said bluntly. "Your people damn near eradicated the Citadel Council in the past. I want to believe you," he bulled ahead even as the queen trilled a protest. "But I'm not willing to risk my people on your word. And something tells me the Citadel Council would not be precisely welcoming of your return."

"No," Nihlus confirmed with a sharp nod. "They would not."

The queen's voice and music was cautious as she asked, "What do you propose?"

"That you come with us to a known world and agree to observation until such time as relations have gotten better." He met the queen's gaze steadily. "Please understand, your people are well known throughout the galaxy for being genocidal monsters. This arrangement will both allow you to begin the restoration of your people without undue risk, and give the rest of the galaxy the time and security we need to feel sure you won't try to kill us."

"Define observation," the queen countered with a strange tone, a mix of outrage, annoyance, acceptance, and resignation.

"I won't pretend to know that," Shepard answered slowly. "If you agree, I will put you in contact with my superiors, and you can hash out the details with them. I don't want to make any promises I can't keep."

The queen hissed lowly as a wave rolled through her tentacle arms. A few quick beats of frustrated anger rushed through the queen's music before she sagged in place. "We see little alternative. We accept."

Shepard sighed in relief. "Excellent," he said. "Then will you tell me what Benezia was after?"

"The she-witch sought the Mu Relay," the queen answered with a trace of venom. "It was lost in a supernova thousands of cycles ago. Our mother's mother located it. We still carry the songs of her discovery. The she-witch pierced our mind and stole our knowledge. Then she sent it to one other. We know not why."

"Saren," Shepard said with a growl. "The relay must be needed to reach the Conduit." He shook his head. There wasn't anything he could do about it from here. "Let's get out of here. Tali, lead the way back out."

The quarian looked at him and her head cocked to the side quizzically. She glanced at the queen and then her voice came over the squad's comm. "Is there a reason we're not taking a portal?"

Shepard responded in kind, making sure he was not audible to the queen. "I want her to see what happened here. Make sure she knows damn well why people don't want the rachni making a comeback tour. Maybe make her a little more cooperative."

"Alright," Tali said in response, her voice tinged with resigned dread. She walked over to the door and palmed the control. Her voice turned sarcastic as she continued. "It's not like this place hasn't given me enough nightmares."

"You'll be fine," he said encouragingly.

She ignored him, keeping her attention on the door. It slid open in a matter of seconds and Tali led the way out. Rex and Nihlus came through behind her, then it was the queen's turn. She let her control over the zombie asari drop and approached the door. The door was never meant for something of her size however, and she was forced to fold her torso almost in half in order to fit through it. In the end though, after a great deal of work, she made it.

However, the very instant she squeezed through, the voice of Mira came over the PA. "Alert," it said in a pleasantly warning tone. "Containment has been breached. This facility will be destroyed in twenty seconds. Have a nice day."

Shepard's eyes went wide. "So much for that plan," he muttered, even as he snapped photos and sent them over to the _Normandy_. "EDI! We need an extra-large portal from here to the cargo bay ASAP."

"On it, Commander," the AI replied instantly. The squad piled through the door and waited impatiently for their escape route to form. Each second seemed to stretch into eternity, each heartbeat took eons. Until finally, a wormhole forced itself into being mere feet from Tali.

Without prompting, the squad threw themselves through the large portal in rapid succession, until only Shepard and the queen remained behind. The rachni had frozen, staring at the wormhole in abject shock. Clearly, she had never seen one before. Too bad they only had-

"This facility will be destroyed in ten seconds," Mira chimed in cheerfully. Shepard felt a flash of boiling rage at the VI's cheer. Explosive, violent death is not something to be happy about.

"Through the portal!" Shepard barked at the queen, tugging on her with his psionics. "It'll take you to our ship!"

The queen shuddered violently at his voice, but she had been woken from her stupor. She trilled a confused thanks to Shepard and surged into the opening. He jumped through right behind her and landed in the _Normandy_'s cargo bay with a solid thump. "Close the portal!" he bellowed loudly. "Now!"

The swirling purple boundary spun abruptly and swirled tighter and tighter until, a fraction of a second later, it vanished in a brief flash of purple light. Shepard sagged in place as the portal disappeared, taking the thick adrenaline in his blood with it. "Whew," he said tiredly. "That was one hell of a way to end a mission."

"You can say that again," Ashley agreed with a sigh as she took off her helmet. Behind her, a door shot open and Liara came rushing through.

"Shepard!" she cried. "Is-" The asari slammed to a halt as her gaze landed on the giant bug standing calmly beside him. Her eyes went wide and her mouth moved soundlessly for several seconds. At length though, she seemed to find her voice, weak as it was. "Ah. That explains it." She blinked and seemed startled by something before she turned and walked away, muttering with an edge of hysteria. "Note to self, don't eat anything Joker recommends. My dreams are getting weird again. I don't even have my whip."

The door sealed itself behind her and the squad dissolved into laughter.

* * *

"Are you out of your mind?!" the emissary to the Citadel thundered. One hand waved dramatically through the air. "The rachni are the Council's most feared and hated enemies. They're not going to just sit back and watch as we foster their return. Sparatus will be calling for my head at the very suggestion!"

"Not to mention that the rachni are just as grave a threat to us as the Citadel," the Supreme Commander of XCOM rumbled quietly. His gravelly voice was firm and unyielding. "If even half of the Citadel's historical reports are accurate, their continued survival is a grave risk with minimal return. Kill it."

"Commander?" Shepard asked with a start. He could not be serious... could he?

"You heard me," the Commander replied firmly. His gaze softened slightly as he continued. "I understand your position, but I will not risk our people for sentimentality. Am I understood?"

Shepard glanced to Udina for support, but the emissary shook his head pointedly. The grunt scowled angrily and turned back to the hologram of the Commander. He blew out a long breath, fighting to keep himself calm. "Permission to speak freely sir?" The Commander nodded with a negligent wave of his hand. "That's bullshit. I've talked to her. She means us no harm and has already agreed to put herself under our supervision. She is grateful we pulled her from Noveria. If we treat her fairly, we could have a very valuable ally. At the very least, she knows things we don't. Hell, her people built a fucking psionic blocker!"

The Commander scowled right back. "Then stick it into an interrogation chamber and pull everything we need from it beforehand. We can't afford to be fighting the rachni and the reapers at the same time."

"That won't happen, sir," Shepard shot back confidently, with just a hint of a snarl.

The sheer conviction with which he spoke seemed to take the Commander back slightly. "What guarantee do you have of that? The rachni attacked the Citadel for no damn reason. What's stopping them from rebuilding and doing the same thing, but to us this time?"

"They're not running from the ethereals anymore," he answered. "That's what."

The ensuing silence was absolute.

Shepard allowed the pair several seconds to absorb the implications of his last statement before continuing. "The rachni were the original source of chryssalids. The ethereals came and harvested them. A handful of queens managed to steal some ships and escape. Then they developed the psi disrupter thing to hide from the self-important fucks and fled to near Citadel Space. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Did she give any proof of this?" the Commander asked slowly.

"Not physically," Shepard admitted. "Rachni queens have the ability to share memories, to pass them from parent to child. She shared some of her ancestors' memories with me regarding the Ethereal invasion of their homeworld. I am as sure as I can be that she is telling the truth."

"Her claims should be simple enough to verify," Udina cut in suddenly. "We have chryssalid samples and the Citadel has maintained records from the Rachni Wars. We can validate that as soon as you give the word."

"You're considering this, Donnel?" the Commander asked with an arched brow.

"Yes. If the rachni truly were victims of the ethereals, our history with them should win us a great deal of cooperation from her." The emissary shook his head. "You know as well as I do that the interrogation chamber rarely yields complete and easily understood data. Her voluntarily sharing that information would yield much more effective results much more quickly."

The Commander's voice was pensive as he asked, "And what of the Citadel?"

Udina scowled. "They, especially Tevos, like to wrap themselves in pretenses of 'civility'," he said, his fingers moving in air quotes around the final word. "It's an angle I can exploit here. It won't do much, but it should keep us out of a formally declared war and the queen alive. Expect us to need to make concessions for anything more."

The Commander frowned in thought. "Do you think it's worth it?"

Udina shot a questioning glance at Shepard, who nodded firmly, before turning back to the Commander. "I do. Depending on what she knows, we may well have stumbled across the holy grail of psionic research. Keep her in a gilded cage, but absolutely keep her alive."

The Commander was silent for several seconds as he gazed into the middle distance, lost in thought. Finally he turned to Shepard. "Very well. We'll take the queen in. However, you will inform her that she has only one chance. If she proves hostile, I will not hesitate to kill her. Make sure she understands that, Lieutenant-Commander."

Shepard saluted. "I will sir."

"Good," the Commander returned the salute and his hologram turned off.

"You like to make my job difficult, don't you Shepard?" Udina asked in the ensuing calm.

Shepard shrugged sheepishly. "I just do what I think is right, Emissary."

Udina shook his head with a sigh. "Get back to finding Saren," he said tiredly. "And try to stop destroying the galactic status quo every time you set foot on a Council world, alright?"

The diplomat's hologram cut off before Shepard could reply. He shrugged with a roll of his eyes. Politicians.

* * *

Udina eyed the councillors as he strode briskly through the door into the Council's private meeting room. Tevos returned his gaze steadily, her icy visage completely void of the thoughts locked behind it, while Sparatus didn't even bother to disguise his glare. Valern blinked as the emissary's eyes moved to him, but made no other motion. Udina resisted the impulse to sigh. They already knew. Damnit Shepard, he thought without heat. Keep your pet Spectre on his leash.

He kept his annoyance off of his face though. He presented a calm, neutral front to all observers as he took his place opposite the Council and cleared his throat. "Good mor-"

"We want it dead," Sparatus interrupted his greeting with all the tact and grace of a thresher maw. The councillor's mandibles flexed in displeasure. "Now."

Udina glanced at the turian, just long enough for the councillor to recognize the act, then deliberately turned his attention back to Tevos. "Is that truly the official position of this august body?"

The asari's face was completely blank as she said, "Yes. The rachni are far too dangerous. There is a reason they were driven to extinction."

Udina nodded slowly. "I can understand that," he said quietly. "I must admit, I did not expect this body to so eagerly resort to genocide, but I can understand your position."

Tevos showed the first sign of emotion so far by cocking an eyebrow. "And I did not expect such a transparent manipulative ploy. You are slipping, Emissary."

"Is it any less true?" Udina shot back. "The fact remains that the rachni queen discovered on Noveria is the last known sample of her species. Killing her is an act of genocide. Are you truly willing to do that?"

"When the alternative is drowning in rachni soldiers and brood warriors, yes," Sparatus countered angrily. "The rachni are a danger to every living thing in the galaxy. I will not tolerate the risk."

Udina nodded along with the turian's words. "Neither will we. And if the situation was different, I would be right beside you," he admitted with a dismissive shrug. Sparatus nodded, even as Tevos and Valern exchanged uncertain glances. "Unfortunately, it is not. The Reapers are coming. We need every ounce of aid we can beg, borrow, and steal. The rachni would be a potent source of such aid. We cannot allow them to be eradicated."

Tevos sighed, as if in pain. "That excuse is getting old, Emissary. Your paranoia cannot be used to justify this risk."

"Which is why she will be held under strict observation and restrictions for the foreseeable future," Udina countered calmly. His gaze moved from one councillor to the next, trying to impress on each of them just how serious he was. "We do not want to see a repeat of the Rachni Wars any more than you do. But we will not squander a valuable asset that we can contain."

Sparatus glowered at the man and opened his mouth to respond, but Tevos held up her hand before he could speak. She met her colleagues' eyes and Udina got the impression an entire conversation happened with a few twitches of the head. Finally though, it seemed they needed to actually speak. Tevos turned to the human in sight and said, "We must confer. Emissary, if you will wait here?"

Udina nodded his acceptance and the Councillors turned and strolled briskly from the room. His thoughts raced as they left. Most likely, they were discussing what concessions to demand of him to leave the queen alive. He frowned as he settled in to wait. This list was going to be outrageous.

The next few minutes passed slowly as Udina tried to compile both the potential list of demands, as well as more palatable counter offers to each one. There were a few obvious items, but the more nuanced pieces were where he was going to run into trouble. There was just too many possibilities to plan for them all. He scowled. He didn't like having to improvise. It was sloppy.

Unfortunately, the opening of the door signaled that his time to plan had come to an end. The councillors walked unhurriedly back to their places and regarded the emissary as a unified front. He cringed internally at the look in their eyes. He was not going to like this.

"Emissary," Tevos began calmly. He matched her steady regard as best he could. "We are willing to accept the continued survival of the rachni, _if_ you can agree to several conditions of our own."

Udina nodded his head in acknowledgment and waved a hand in a gesture to continue, so Tevos cleared her throat and began. "First, the rachni will be confined to a single world. They will not have access to spacecraft, with or without faster-than-light capabilities, and they will not construct their own."

"We can agree to that," Udina nodded, even as he tried not to show his relief. Maybe this list wouldn't be so bad.

"Second, the rachni's new world will be, at minimum, two hundred light years from the nearest mass relay or warpgate."

"Agreed, with two provisos," Udina said. Tevos gave him an arch look and he continued. "The world in question is to be within Coalition Space, and you will not cause a fuss if we are forced to move or destroy a mass relay in order to comply."

Tevos' eyes narrowed and she glanced at Sparatus, who nodded his acceptance after a slight pause. "Agreed, with the understanding that destruction of a mass relay is the absolute last resort." When Udina nodded, she continued. "Third, our Spectres operating within Coalition Space are given full access to all observation posts and research derived from the rachni."

"No," Udina countered immediately. This one had been one of the obvious demands. "We will not risk there being an 'accident' while a Spectre is observing them. We are prepared to offer access to all data from our observations of the rachni, as well as second-hand observation with devices of their choosing, provided we verify they are not a danger to the rachni."

"Not good enough," Valern said bluntly.

The salarian's unblinking stare was quite unnerving for the emissary, but he gamely tried not to show it. "That is what you will get," he said firmly. His gaze moved from the salarian to the asari councillor. Tevos frowned infinitesimally at him and he knew he'd have to give them something. "In exchange for these restrictions, we will allow you to double the number of active Spectres within our borders, as well as grant them access to any non-psionic-based technology derived from the rachni."

Tevos and Valern exchanged a long glance, full of small motions that hinted at a long, unspoken conversation, before Tevos turned to the emissary. "Very well. We accept the revised terms." Tevos' brow furrowed slightly and Udina suddenly felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. "Fourth, and finally, the Coalition will provide the process for elerium creation."

He had to give them credit for that one, it was ballsy as hell. Ludicrous, if they thought it was going to work, but ballsy. "No," he said aloud. He wasn't surprised to see Tevos' eyes flash over to Valern for a fraction of a second. He shook his head. Of course the salarians would want to get their hands on that. "Not a chance. It would be completely useless to you anyway."

"This is non-negotiable," Valern interjected.

"Then this negotiation is over," Udina said with aplomb. Ignoring Tevos' surprised look, he turned and strode for the door. "Call me when you decide to be serious."

"Plasma weaponry then," Sparatus offered, halfway through the human's turn. "The schematics and science behind infantry-scale plasma weapons." Udina stopped, still half-turned away from the Council and considered the matter.

Plasma weapons, as far as XCOM's best and brightest could tell, required elerium to generate enough power in a small enough package to be man-portable. The Citadel wouldn't be able to manufacture infantry weapons without Coalition assistance. That dependency would be nice. On the other hand, they likely had powerful enough generators on their ships. They would most likely take the blueprints and make their own version of a plasma cannon, let their frigates punch above their weight class.

Udina frowned. Making an alien military stronger was the last thing he wanted to do.

Then he remembered the Reapers. Damnit. Everyone needed to be at their best to deal with those things.

He turned back to the Council with a heavy scowl. "We can agree to that," he said slowly, trying to keep the venom out of his voice. It had physically pained him to say those words. "Plasma rifle schematics plus the other terms as we agreed and the rachni will be left in peace." He blew out a heavy, angry breath when Tevos nodded. "Very well. Will that be all?"

"Yes, Emissary," Tevos answered calmly. Udina gave the Council a shallow bow and strode from the room.

He hoped he still had a job after he reported this. The Commander was not going to be happy.

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Queen  
June, 2183**  
_Our first meeting with the rachni queen was quite possibly the simplest and least difficult interrogation in XCOM history. The subject, who has taken the name 'Maia', after the Greek goddess of rebirth, for dealings with humans, proved wholly cooperative with our questions and was quite understanding of the security precautions in place. It is clear she is not thrilled to suffer them, but she appears willing to tolerate it for now._

_The information the subject has provided, on the other hand, has been of varying use. She was initially reticent, but upon learning that we were responsible for the destruction of the Ethereals, she has become much more amenable, even offering information unprompted at times. Unfortunately, even this enthusiasm does not extend to the one topic we most wish to know more of. She either does not know or refuses to share the mechanics behind the reported 'psi disrupter'. Given her general attitude and cooperation, we are inclined to believe that information is simply not available._

_She has, however, provided a great deal of insight into the processes that created the Chryssalids. This insight has yielded a great boon to our own genetic manipulation capabilities. We are hesitant to extend such capabilities to use on humans, for obvious reasons, but it has already yielded promising early results with cancer-eating viruses and genetically engineered crops. We will continue to expand this research as new avenues open._


	21. Bonding

**Chapter 20: Bonding**

Shepard blew out a heavy breath and glared daggers at the closed door in front of him, and the fist that refused to move the last inch and knock on it. Every fiber of his being wanted desperately to avoid this conversation, but he simply couldn't leave it. Liara deserved better than that. Her mother was dead, and he had promised to get her out alive. She deserved to hear about it from him as quickly as possible. It was only right. He wouldn't let his own cowardice stop that from happening.

He closed his eyes and sighed, shaking his head. But he would let it distract and delay him, it would seem. Before he could think about it further, he forced his hand to finish its journey and hit the door with a solid thud. "One moment," a muffled voice from beyond it caused him to tense unconsciously.

Several seconds of this passed in agonizing slowness, punctuated by faint rustling that only ratcheted the tension he was feeling even further. Finally though, Liara cracked open the door, and Shepard had to fight the urge to wince. The asari had seen better days. Her clothes were rumpled and mussed and he could spot hastily-cleaned evidence of tears. Even her bearing, normally so friendly, showed evidence of wear. She was on her feet, but slumped tiredly against the door and letting it take most of her weight. Her eyes met his and a dreadful certainty lurked behind her eyes. She already knew what he had come to say, he realized.

"Shepard," she greeted him, her voice thick with tightly leashed emotion. "She is dead, isn't she?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes." His eyes moved to the floor, unable to hold her gaze as he said, "I'm sorry."

She slumped at his words, what little strength she had left leaving her in a rush. She made a strangled, half-sobbing sound and asked, "Ho- How did she die?"

The commander gave her a concerned look and raised one arm, his hand hovering awkwardly beside her bicep, ready to catch her if she fell. "Now probably isn't the time for that," he said quietly. "You look lik-"

"No!" she snapped angrily, batting his hand away. "I am _fine_." She glared hotly at him for a long moment, but the surge of energy vanished as quickly as it had come. She sagged and continued in a soft voice. "Please," she pleaded. She met Shepard's gaze imploringly, and he could feel a vice tightening in his chest.

He blew out an explosive sigh. "Are you sure?" he asked, quietly hoping she would take the offered out.

His hopes crashed when she nodded, her jaw set determinedly. "Tell me."

Shepard nodded slowly and spoke as dispassionately as he could. "Saren sent her to Noveria to get information out of a rachni queen they had found in cryogenic stasis." Liara cocked her head questioningly, but she apparently deemed her mother's fate more important than learning more about the rachni, for she stayed silent. "After she arrived, the rachni soldiers they were cloning went insane and overran the facility. Benezia and a handful of her followers were able to lock themselves in the room where they kept the queen. We took care of the crazy rachni and forced our way into the room with them. She did not respond to that well."

He very carefully did not show any external sign of the degree of understatement of his last sentence. "We fought her and her followers until I stumbled across the psi disrupter." Liara's expression flickered with curiousity again, and her mouth cracked open to voice the question, but once again she stopped herself before she could actually speak. One of her hands flopped in a continue gesture, and Shepard complied cautiously. "I destroyed the disrupter and the queen used her psionics to break free." He looked Liara in the eye and said, "Her first act outside of the cage was to kill Benezia."

Liara's eyes closed tightly. "I see," she said at length, and he had no idea what was going through her head. It was as if a three-foot-thick steel shutter had slammed down over her thoughts. Absolutely nothing was coming through. She opened her eyes and looked to Shepard. "Was Benezia under Sovereign's control?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly. She winced, but he could not find it in himself to regret it. She needed the truth more than a comforting lie right now. "My gut says yes, but I saw no indication either way."

The asari nodded with a politely blank expression that Shepard found incredibly unnerving. There was no single aspect of her demeanor that he could pinpoint as being the cause, but as he looked at her, he could feel an unnameable dread welling up within him. In that moment, he felt honest fear of a thin blue woman that barely came up to his shoulders. What the hell?

"Very well," her voice, still utterly devoid of emotion, intruded into his racing thoughts. "If you will excuse me, Commander, I have a bug to kill."

Shepard gaped at her. She's lost it, he realized. She's grieving and latching onto the first target she can find to vent. She tried to brush past him but, before she could react, he grabbed her around the middle with both hands and pulled her bodily into her quarters. He kicked the door closed behind him as he came through and it swung shut just as Liara began struggling.

"Damnit Shepard!" she barked, twisting and turning her torso under his grip. Her arms, trapped under his, pulled tightly and her feet bounced of his shins with bruising force. He had to force himself to ignore it, to not get more and more angry with every blow. "Let me go!"

"No," he snapped back, tightening his grip as it began to slip. "You're not thinking straight, and you're staying here until you are."

She glared at him as best she could with her shoulder in the way. "It killed my mother!"

"Your mother was responsible for her children going insane," Shepard shot back as his frustration got the better of him. He barely noticed as Liara froze like a sectoid staring down the barrel of a plasma rifle. "Of course the queen was going to be pissed at her."

The fight drained out of the asari in his arms. She deflated, almost like a balloon, forcing Shepard to support her full weight. "Really?" she asked weakly, desperate for a no.

Shepard suddenly felt like the galaxy's biggest ass. "Yes," he confirmed weakly, unable to look at her, cursing the fact that even now, he couldn't bring himself to lie to her about it. "She was."

Liara began sobbing then. Raw, naked, powerful grief wracked her small frame as he held her, silently willing whatever comfort he could into the woman. She turned suddenly in his arms and buried her face into his chest as her arms encircled his torso. He could feel her hot tears soaking into his shirt. "Shh," he said as one hand began stroking her back. "It'll be okay."

* * *

Shepard stepped out of the room, closed the door behind him, and slumped against it with a sigh. Liara had finally cried herself to sleep a few minutes ago, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into his rack and sleep for the next week. He had one more stop to make before he could do that though.

He shoved off the door and grimaced at the feeling of sodden fabric rubbing against his chest. Perhaps he should change his shirt first. With a dismissive shrug, he turned and headed for his quarters. The walk was brief, less than twenty meters, and he slipped into his quarters in a matter of seconds. He quickly swapped his shirt for a fresh one and took a moment to relish the feeling of cleanliness. Then he turned around and made to leave once more.

The act prompted Rex to look up from where he had been laying and whine inquisitively.

"Just gonna go check on Garrus," he said over his shoulder. "Wanna come?"

Rex yipped an affirmative and rolled to his feet before trotting over to him. Shepard nodded once, turned and walked out. He led the way to the infirmary, distractedly returning the greetings from the various members of the crew that he passed. He was too preoccupied with grisly imaginings of what may have befallen his turian friend to worry about being polite. He was so lost in thought in fact, that before he'd even realized he was close, he found himself walking through the door into Dr. Chakwas' domain.

Garrus still lay on the bed Shepard had put him in, but it had since been surrounded with a privacy screen. All that could be seen of the turian from the doorway was a pair of taloned feet sticking out just past the screen. The steady beeping of an EKG filled the medbay, a strangely comforting sound to Shepard. It meant Garrus was still alive.

"Ah, Commander Shepard," Dr. Chakwas greeted him over her shoulder as he came in. She stood from her desk and turned to face him. "Come to check on Mr. Vakarian?"

"Got it in one doc," he answered blithely. His gaze flicked from her to the feet on the last bed. "How is he?"

"He will live," the doctor said, her voice tinged with something Shepard couldn't identify. Her tone pulled Shepard's attention fully back to her, and she grimaced. "But even with skin grafts, he will always bear the scars."

Shepard frowned. "How bad?"

"It's not so bad," Garrus' voice interjected. "I'm still prettier than you."

Shepard's head whipped back around, fast enough to put a crick in his neck. He yelped in surprise at the sensation, one hand coming up to rub his neck, before he looked to the bed. He was just in time to see the privacy screen finish retracting. Rex barked happily and rushed over, even as the turian swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up to face the commander. Shepard barely suppressed a flinch at the sight. Garrus' right mandible was a mess of scar tissue and half-formed skin grafts. It looked as if someone had taken hot wax and shaped it into something only vaguely approximating a turian cheek. Lumps and runnels of flesh formed disturbing patterns all along the lower half of his head. There was even a gentle blue glow that could be seen leaking through the tissue in places, stark evidence of bone grafts, if not outright replacements.

The acid had not been content to only rob the turian of his jaw though. Half-melted flesh traced thick lines up from his jaw and along his cheek, straight through his blue face paint. The biggest of these marks described a perfect line from the tip of his chin, up over his upper jaw and narrowly missing his nose in favor of going straight over what he once been his right eye.

The eye had not survived. A small metal plate had been affixed to the socket, holding a small, clearly cybernetic, replacement very much like a geth's eye, complete with swirling aperture to act as a lid. It glowed a barely detectable blue in the dimness of the medbay, giving the wounded turian an almost ominous appearance.

Shepard scowled fiercely at nothing as he realized what the mission had taken from Garrus. A brilliant flash of rage and self-loathing shot through him. He should have seen the rachni coming, or deflected the acid with his psionics, or any of the million other things he could have done back in that cold, dead room. The more rational part of him spoke up, insisting that there wasn't anything he could have done, but the rest of him wasn't feeling very receptive to it. It was his fault Garrus was missing an eye, and he wasn't about to let rational arguments get in the way of that.

Still, Garrus didn't need to know that. He had enough to worry about. He pasted a half-grin on his face with an effort of will and shot back at Garrus by turning to Chakwas with a hidden wink and asking, "You sure that thing's calibrated right? He appears to be seeing things."

The doctor smiled wryly, ignoring Garrus' yelp of protest. "It was my first time calibrating a cybernetic eye for a turian. It's possible I crossed a few wires."

"Bah!" Garrus took their teasing good naturedly, deigning instead to ruffle Rex's ears. "I am now officially a cyber commando. Your opinions are invalid."

The dog yipped a gentle reprimand, then whined inquisitively with a pointed glance at the turian's new eye. Garrus grinned shallowly at the SHIV, pulling grotesquely on the half melted flesh of his cheek. "Of course it counts," he said with a trace of exasperation. "It's a _cyber_-netic eye. And I'm a commando. That makes me a cyber commando."

Rex rolled his eyes with a chuff and tapped himself on the chest with a forepaw. Garrus' organic eye narrowed. "No way," he shot back. "You're a robot. You can't be a cyber anything."

The SHIV whined, sad and pathetic, and put his head on Garrus' lap, training huge, sad eyes on the turian. Garrus, as riddled with painkillers as he must have been, lasted all of four seconds under that look. "Fine, but you're not a commando." Rex whined again and Garrus sighed, sending Shepard an aggrieved look. The commander simply grinned widely and unrepentantly in return. Garrus sighed again and turned back to Rex. "Fine," he said slowly, defeated. "You can be a cyber commando."

Rex yipped happily and stepped back, sitting down at the foot of Garrus' bed. Across the room, Shepard burst into a deep belly laugh that drew a glare from Garrus. His face twitched jerkily into a frown and he made to rise, but Dr. Chakwas tutted at him with a fond smile. "Down, Vakarian," she said sternly. "You're not going anywhere until the skin grafts are finished. You will not be leaving that bed until tomorrow, at the earliest. Am I clear?" Garrus opened his mouth to protest and she narrowed her eyes at him. "Am I clear?" she repeated in the exact same tone.

He must have seen something in it though, because his eyes went wide in surprise and he raised his hands in mock surrender. "Crystal," he mumbled quickly as he sank back onto the bed. "I'm not leaving." She nodded approvingly and turned back to her desk, the room soon filling with the sound of paperwork being filed. The turian's bemuesd and helpless gaze moved from the doctor to Shepard. He sobered instantly and asked, "How'd the mission go? Did you get Benezia?"

Shepard grimaced and answered him. He laid out the tale from the fight in the cafeteria all the way to the destruction of the facility, and was treated to a first-hand lesson on turian cursing. Somehow, once Shepard finished, he managed to go a full three minutes of swearing without once repeating himself. It was rather impressive.

"Pretty much," Shepard agreed once the tirade had run its course. "We all lived through it though. That's better than a lot of people can say."

Garrus gave a tired sigh. "Yea." One hand rose up to lightly caress the synthetic eye and he mumbled, almost too quietly to hear, "mostly."

Another round of self-recriminations raced through Shepard's thoughts, and he had to fight not to voice it. Garrus did not need him throwing a pity party beside his hospital bed right now. "Anyway," he said with false cheer, deliberately forcing his thoughts away from their darkening path. "It's good to see you up and moving. I just came by to make sure you're alright, so I'll let you get back to sleep now."

Garrus shook his head and let his hand fall. "Yea," he said distractedly. "I'll see you later."

Shepard whistled quietly, calling Rex over to him, and led the way out of the medbay, his mind giving him no respite from its accusations. Low, simmering anger raced through him, at the rachni, at Saren, at the Reapers, and at himself. He blew out a hot breath. Great. Now he'd never get to sleep.

* * *

A loud, drawn out yawn escaped from Shepard's mouth as he walked through the door to the squad's ready room, grabbing the attention of the sole occupant. Nihlus glanced up briefly from the reports he had clearly been scanning and he muttered a terse greeting without moving from his chair.

"Nihlus," Shepard said in return, suppressing another yawn. Damn restless nights. His prediction had proven true enough, and it was making today something of a nightmare. He shook his head, forcing the grumbling to the back of his mind. He quickly strode over to the turian's side and scowled as he closed the open display, reverting back to a folder view. "What were you looking at?"

"I am attempting to anticipate Saren's movements." Nihlus said in a bored tone. He tapped the enormous list of files and reports on the holographic display and sighed heavily. "It is mind-numbing work."

"Want a hand?" Shepard offered without thinking. Even as the words finished leaving his mouth, he was regretting it. He'd probably pass out ten minutes into it if it was as boring as Nihlus made it sound.

The Spectre's face twisted into the turian equivalent of a grimace. "I cannot allow you to. You do not have sufficient clearance from the Citadel Council," he said, frustration leaking into his voice. "No one else on this vessel does. I would welcome a momentary distraction however. Perhaps a fresh perspective is what I need to find what we are looking for here, if you are willing?"

"Fair enough," Shepard said, unable to stop the relief that leaked into his voice. "I can do that. What do you need my take on?"

"Saren," Nihlus said firmly. "More specifically, where he will go. The Mu Relay is a Secondary Relay. There are dozens, possibly hundreds of potential destinations that we know of within range of it." He stabbed a taloned finger at his terminal. "And these are intelligence reports on every system within range. Which would Saren pick?"

"Depends on what he wants," Shepard countered with a suggestion. "Let's lay out what we know and work from there. Maybe we'll see something on another look-through."

Nihlus glowered at him briefly, presumably annoyed by having to go over this information for the nth time, but he complied with a swift series of keystrokes into his terminal. A simple list of text came to the fore, and Nihlus began to read it aloud. "First, his goals. Saren has one ultimate objective, if the geth are to be believed." Shepard's lips narrowed at the implication, but he decided not to comment. It wasn't worth it. "To bring back the Reapers. In order to do this, he needs a prothean artifact known only as the Conduit."

"Which we know nothing about," Shepard cut in with a frown.

"No," Nihlus agreed with a soft clacking sound, almost like a human tutting. "It could be nearly anything. All we know is that, according to Shiala, the Eden Prime beacon had information Saren needed in order to find it."

"And that he needs the Mu Relay to reach wherever it's hidden," Shepard cut in smoothly, reading the list over Nihlus' shoulder.

"Hence the intelligence reports," Nihlus grumbled tiredly. His shoulders slumped slightly in defeat. "From which, I have found nothing."

Shepard nodded quietly. "Did the queen know anything?" When Nihlus didn't respond, the commander turned to him and gave him an arch look. "You didn't think of that, did you?"

The turian slowly rose to his feet, forcing Shepard to step back, and said, his voice laced with a strange mixture of reluctance and self-annoyance. "No," he admitted quietly. "I did not."

"Let's go ask her then," Shepard suggested forcefully. The commander grabbed Nihlus' arm and dragged the turian behind him as he walked over to the door. "Ken was setting up the transceiver for her on my way in. You should be able to talk to her directly now."

"Joy," Nihlus muttered sarcastically as he was dragged out of the ready room.

Shepard ignored the turian's sullen tone in favor of focusing on the rachni queen. She stood calmly in the center of the _Normandy_'s cargo hold while a short, red-haired engineer tinkered with a slim box roughly his own size beside her. As Shepard approached, the engineer stepped back and ran the back of his hand along his forehead.

"Tha' should do it," he announced in a light Scottish brogue. "Gi'e her a try."

The box squawked alarmingly for a full second and Shepard flinched from the sudden onslaught of noise. It died as quickly as it started however, to be replaced by a light, airy and lyrical voice that said, "The device works as required. You have our thanks, Machine One."

"Ach, dinnae worry abou' it," the engineer said with a shrug as he stowed away his tools. "Jus' doin' my job." He glanced over his shoulder at Shepard and nodded. "And jus' in time too, by the look o' it."

The queen followed his gaze to Shepard, then trilled a quiet greeting as she recognized him. "We offer greetings, One of Bloody Music. Do you require assistance?"

Shepard blinked. That was one he hadn't heard before. More than a little aggravating too. He couldn't stop himself from asking about it. "One of Bloody Music?"

"Queenie here thinks differently than we do," the engineer answered him with a gesture at the queen. "They dinnae have names like us. They identify people by relation to other things, and the magic box 'ere has ta guess at her meanin'."

The queen trilled her agreement and extrapolated on her reasoning. "Your singing is loud. Angry. Violent. Your music is soaked in blood."

Shepard scowled at her. That's just wonderful. Now he's getting a psych eval from a giant bug. That's exactly what his life needed. A brief flash of anger surged through him at the thought. There was only one way she could get that information. His eyes narrowed and he glared at the queen as he snapped, "Stay out of my head."

The rachni trilled again, a mournful note this time. "We did not," she said, her voice almost, but not quite, defensive. "Your music is loud. Obvious. We could not help but hear."

Fucking fantastic, Shepard thought. Now a giant bug can listen to his every thought, and he had no idea how to stop it. Outrage at the violation of privacy mixed with his frustration at his lack of sleep and the hell of the last few days and quickly turned into something ugly. Faint purple streamers wafted from his tight fists as he opened his mouth to say something rather scathing, and equally stupid. The queen responded to his anger in her own way. Her tentacle arms weaved gently through the air and a low halo of psionic power highlighted her form.

The engineer paled and took a couple shaky steps back, before he tripped over nothing and landed heavily on his back, scattering tools around the area. The sudden commotion cracked like a whip through the rush of irrational rage and Shepard abruptly felt as if he'd been dunked in a bucket of ice water. He flinched and his powers dissipated, retreating back to the far corner of his soul. "You okay, Ken?" he asked, shooting a concerned glance at the engineer.

"Peachy," he said, sitting up on the floor and massaging the back of his head with one hand. "Mind not doin' that agin, Commander?"

The queen trilled her agreement with that sentiment. "We wish it were so," she said, the lyrical tones of her synthesized voice carrying a hint of disapproval.

Shepard ducked his head slightly and shrugged helplessly. "Sorry. I haven't exactly had the best week."

"None of us have," Nihlus interrupted, stepping around Shepard with a reproving glance at the commander. He turned back around and eyed the rachni queen appraisingly. "However, we still have a job to do. We are seeking the one ultimately responsible for your imprisonment on Noveria. Are you willing to help us find them?"

"Yes," the queen answered eagerly. "What do you require?"

"Were you able to learn anything about why Matriarch Benezia wanted to find the Mu Relay?" the Spectre asked. "Where they were planning to travel with it, for example?"

The queen trilled sadly. "No. The she-witch's mind was broken. She was but a vessel for another, greater will. We could learn nothing from her." Shepard frowned. So Benezia was being controlled. Liara would want to hear about that.

"Damnit," Nihlus cursed vehemently. He kicked at a wrench by his feet and sent it flying across the room, where it hit the wall with a clang. The turian expertly ignored the glare from the engineer, who left soon after to retrieve his wrench, in favor of turning his attention on Shepard. "I will return to studying those reports then." He nodded at the queen. "Thank you for your assistance."

The Spectre turned and briskly strode away, straight back into the ready room. As the door closed behind him, Shepard turned his attention back to the queen. "Thank you," he said with a shallow bow, forcing an apology into his tone. He tried a tentative smile when she trilled back at him. "We'll be meeting with the XCS _Yamaguchi_ tomorrow," he told her. "They'll take you to the shortlist of planets you picked out to investigate. I hope you find a good home on one of them."

"We thank you," she replied at once. One of her tentacle arm things shot forward suddenly, and Shepard had to fight the instinctive urge to dive away from the motion. It proved to be the right choice a second later as the bulb on the end of it stopped just within his arm's reach. The bulb opened slightly and she trilled. "Friends?" she asked tentatively, the music in her voice full of hope.

Shepard cocked an eyebrow at her. The queen had an annoying ability to surprise him, it seemed. He pointedly sent a questioning glance at her bulb and she explained, "Your kind have been observed sealing agreements with a grasping ritual."

Ah. She wanted to shake on it. Shepard chuckled dryly and awkwardly gripped the bulb in his right hand. "Sure, why not?" he asked rhetorically as the bulb began to undulate with his hand attached. "Let's be friends."

* * *

Without warning, a loud series of booming knocks filled Shepard's chamber. Unprepared for the sudden sound, Shepard nearly jumped out of his skin. The flinch shot all the way down to his hands, which drew a jagged line of soot and half-melted plastic along the circuit board he had been working on. He cursed under his breath as he put away his soldering iron and immediately tried to salvage what he could from the mess. It wasn't likely to be much.

A few seconds passed in silence as he busied himself trying to save the thing, but another series of booming knocks reminded him of the cause of his current problems. "What?!" he snapped loudly, refusing to get up from his desk. If they wanted to talk, they could damn well come to him.

The door hissed open and the unmistakable thud of krogan footsteps filled the room. Shepard sighed internally. He should have known.

"Carnifex," Wrex rumbled, his voice grave. "We need to talk."

Shepard felt one brow raise and, finally, turned to face his visitor. "What about?" he asked cautiously, though he had a feeling he already knew. The queen had just been offloaded two hours ago, and now Wrex ambled in wanting to talk. He had stopped believing in coincidence over a decade ago. There was no way they were unrelated.

"You've earned my trust, Carnifex," the krogan stated simply. "But you have not earned blind obedience." He folded his arms over his wide chest and, there was no other way to put it, _glowered_ at Shepard, demanding answers. "I will ask you once, and if I don't like your answer, I'll throw you out the nearest airlock." He paused to let that sink in, then asked, "Why?"

The commander stood from his chair and met Wrex's stare evenly, refusing to be intimidated by the krogan's sheer size. He didn't even bother asking for clarification. They both knew why Wrex was here. "Because it was the right thing to do. Because it wasn't worth the risk to put her down. Because the rachni could be useful against the Reapers." He scowled at nothing. "Or maybe because she wasn't responsible for the Rachni Wars. Take your pick."

A faint, disappointed chuckle rolled out of Wrex's throat. "Heh. Because the Carnifex of Khar'shan doesn't want to get his hands dirty?"

Shepard grimaced distastefully. "I have enough innocent blood on my hands."

"And if it's not innocent?" Wrex rumbled quietly. His stare intensified, became piercing. Shepard suddenly felt more exposed than if he had stripped naked on the extranet. The feeling was at once humbling and infuriating, and Shepard didn't hesitate to let it show.

"Then I will kill her myself," he said coldly, his eyes blazing with restrained anger. His tone was final and absolute, tolerant of absolutely no dissension. "But not until she's done something that deserves it." He'd been down that path before. He wouldn't tread it again.

The krogan's stare bored into him, an unceasing torrent that Shepard matched with his own implacable will. Low, simmering anger met calm regard and the room thrummed with barely perceptible tension, waiting impatiently to see which of the pair blinked first.

The silent battle of wills continued for several seconds, but in the end, it was Wrex who backed down. He glanced aside, breaking the stare, and jerking his head in a motion that could almost be called acceptance on anyone else. "Good enough," he muttered as he did. The tension in the room broke with an almost audible snap, and Shepard felt his muscles loosening unconsciously in response. The low, frustrated anger melted out of the commander, leaving him just feeling relieved.

Wrex eyed him in undisguised amusement, and a low chuckle escaped from the krogan. Shepard frowned briefly before his hand flicked out and lightly swatted Wrex upside the head. A momentary corona of purple flickered from his hand, arresting the krogan's instinctive counter the very instant it began. "Down boy," he said dryly.

Wrex glared at him and bared blocky teeth at him in a half-snarl. "Don't try that again," he said, his voice utterly calm.

One side of Shepard's lips quirked up. "Then don't give me reason to," he shot back. He wasn't about to back down and blow the comradery they'd built. "You deserved it."

Wrex's glare upgraded to a glower and he snorted loudly. "Don't push your luck, Carnifex."

"Eh," Shepard said dismissively. "It's what I do best. You need anything else, or can I get back to trying to salvage what you broke?"

An inquisitive grunt was his only response, but by the glance Wrex took at the scarred circuitboard behind him, it was easy enough to guess the unasked question.

"New psionic amp based on the Thorian," he answered calmly. "The coats sent me a copy of the first draft of the schematics and I'm seeing what I can do to improve on it." He shook his head irritably and scowled at his visitor. "Your visit set me back a few hours."

Wrex grunted again, almost apologetically, and nodded before wordlessly turning and stomping back out of the room. The door sealed behind him and Shepard blew out a noisy breath. He turned back to his desk and glared at the ugly black line marring the circuit board. This was not going to be a fun repair.

* * *

"Finally!" Shepard exclaimed with relief before a yawn escaped him. He set the finished psionic amp on his table and shot a look at his clock, only for his eyes to go wide in surprise. "Not again," he whined petulantly, not even fighting the slump of his shoulders. He shot a glare over his shoulder at the still form of Rex, and grumbled, "You could have at least told me when we passed 2 AM."

The SHIV looked up, grinned and cocked his head slightly, making clear the unspoken question of 'where would be the fun in that?'. Shepard flashed him a rude gesture, but Rex just let out an amused chuff and lay back down. Shepard gave him an irritated glare offset by a fond smile and shook his head, even as another yawn tore from his throat. "Good idea," he muttered to the dog. He turned to his bunk and managed all of one step toward it before his bladder alerted him of more pressing issues.

His second step smoothly swung around and pointed him right at the door to his quarters. Rex whined inquisitively as he palmed the door control. "Need the head," Shepard grunted without looking and stepped through the doorway. He could hear Rex lay back down as the door sealed behind him, leaving him in the dim lighting of the ship's night.

The _Normandy_ at night was a vastly different experience, Shepard idly thought as he made his way through the almost completely empty hallways. The night shift was but a small fraction of the crew, and the absence of the normal background bustle made the ship feel lifeless and cloying. It was subtly unnerving to see the places normally so full of life so still and dead. He didn't let it bother him however, and made it to the bathroom in short order.

He did his business quickly and stepped out of the room, destined for his rack and as much sleep as he could get. As the door to the bathroom closed however, a sudden clatter from the nearby lounge grabbed his attention. He was tempted to ignore it, after all, if it was a problem, EDI would let him know, and bed was sounding perfect right about now, but a low, indecipherable murmur prompted him to investigate.

He quickly crossed the few meters separating him from the lounge door and slapped the control. "Eek!" Tali shrieked at the sudden whoosh of the door opening. Small, vaguely animalistic figurines were flung wildly through the air as she jumped in surprise and whirled to face the portal. Around her feet, several more of the small figurines lay scattered and an intricate, two foot tall structure that looked like nothing so much as a chess board as designed by M.C. Escher stood on the table beside her. "Shepard!" she half-scolded, half-yelped when she caught sight of him. "You scared me."

"Sorry," he said with an apologetic smile and a small yawn. "I was leaving the head when I heard something in here and thought I'd take a look. Didn't mean to scare you."

"It's fine," she said, calmer now. Her breathing was slowly steadying as well, though something about her still seemed off. She waved one hand at the structure. "That was me. I accidentally knocked over my _paisho_ set in the middle of a game."

"_Paisho_?" Shepard asked with a slight frown. "I've never heard of it."

"I'm not surprised," Tali replied with forced cheer as she turned back to picking up the small figurines. "It's not widely known outside of the Flotilla. It's one of the few things that survived the Geth War. My father taught me how to play and it helps when I'm-" She cut herself off abruptly with a shake of the head and busied herself with the simple task.

A brief embarrassed silence settled over the room, until small streams of psionic power flowed from Shepard and grabbed the pieces that had been scattered by his surprise entrance. He offered the cluster of figurines to Tali, who accepted them with a mumbled thanks. "When you... what?" he prompted gently. Something was wrong with her and he didn't feel right leaving her to deal with it alone. "Can't sleep?"

"No!" she said hurriedly and emphatically. She forced a chuckle and said, "What makes you think I couldn't..." She trailed off as Shepard gave her a look that quite clearly told her he wasn't buying it. She slumped in place and her body language screamed defeat. When she spoke, her voice was tired and sad. "Yes. I can't sleep."

Shepard crossed the distance between them and gave the quarian an encouraging smile. "Want to talk about it?"

"No," she answered instantly. A beat later, before Shepard had even had time to react, she shrank in on herself and continued in a tired and lost voice. "Yes. I don't know."

Shepard put a hand on her shoulder and gently led her over to the lounge's sofa. She followed stiffly, as if on autopilot, but she sat down as he directed her to. "What's wrong?"

A tremor, so minor he wouldn't have noticed had his hand not been on her shoulder, ran through her body. "Every time I close my eyes," she began shakily. "It's like I'm back there, on Noveria. Like I never left." He took a seat beside her and tried to squeeze one of her hands comfortingly. She returned his grip forcefully, almost to the point of pain, but refused to look at him. She continued unsteadily, her voice edging on hysteria. "Every time I go to sleep, I'm knee deep in bodies and blood all over again. And it doesn't stop."

Her legs folded up so that she could huddled behind her knees and she pulled her arms around them, though she took care not to break her grip on Shepard's hand. He silently offered whatever support he could to her. "I haven't slept for more than two hours since we got back," she admitted a few seconds later.

Shepard grimaced. Nightmares made sense, especially if she had never seen anything like Peak 15 before, but he had no idea how to help with that. "That was the first time you've ever seen that, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she agreed quietly, barely loud enough to be heard.

He squeezed her hand and gave her a wan smile. "I won't say it gets easier," he said tiredly. He stared straight into the glowing spots on her visor he was sure were her eyes and poured as much sincerity as he could into his words. "Because it doesn't. But you will learn how to deal with it. It's not right and it's not fair, but you'll learn to live with it in time. I've been where you are now, so I know that nothing I say is going to make it better." Tali slumped against her legs and another small tremor rocked her frame. "But," he said, and she perked up, immediately fixing her whole attention on him. "I'm here for you, whatever you need."

Without another word, she twisted the arm he was holding and slipped under his, where she released his hand before she lunged at him and hugged him across the chest. "Thank you," she murmured into his shirt. "That means a lot."

"You're, er, you're welcome," he said as his hand hovered awkwardly over her back. She curled into his side with an unintelligible murmur and his hand dropped to rest on her back. "Tali?" he ventured, somewhat uncomfortable with her snuggling him.

There was no response. He prodded her back, but she had, evidently, passed out nearly immediately. He couldn't say he was comfortable with her there, but he was loath to move. If she had had that much trouble sleeping, he'd feel like a heel if he woke her up. He'd deal with being uncomfortable if it helped her some.

Resigned to staying put, he let his head fall back and stopped fighting the pull on his eyelids. He was asleep before his head hit the back of the couch.

* * *

A low murmuring heralded Shepard's gradual return to consciousness. His groggy mind couldn't recognize any of the words, or even the voices, but he could pick up on the tone of amusement running through it. A Herculean effort of will forced one eye open a crack, only to let it close with a hiss of pain at the bright light beyond. "Oww," he moaned groggily. "Too brigh'."

The murmurs redoubled, but now that he was at least partially awake, he could start to make out actual words. "Comfortable, Shepard?" the voice asked cheerily.

"Wuh?" he managed to mumble in reply. His head turned toward the source and he gingerly, carefully cracked open his eyes once more. A wide swathe of blurry brown and gunmetal grey greeted his vision, interrupted only by a tall black and grey form streaked with a deep blue. He blinked owlishly and the room slowly came into focus, sharpening the blur into the distinct form of a turian clad in the distinctive blue and black of C-SEC. "Garrus?" he wondered aloud. Something seemed off about his quarters, but in the fuzzy grogginess of sleep, he couldn't pick it out. "What're you doin' in my room?"

The turian chuckled quietly. "Look again, Shepard."

Shepard glanced around and groaned quietly, finally recognizing what seemed so wrong. He wasn't in his quarters at all. What was he doing in here? He began to sit up, only to find the attempt impeded by a solid weight atop his chest. He glanced down and damn near jumped out of his skin.

Tali lay stretched out on top of him, with the faceplate of her visor pressed into his chest and her hands loosely holding fistfuls of his shirt, while one of his hands rested against her back, holding her flush against him. Now that he was aware of her presence, he became uncomfortably aware of the way her breasts pressed against his stomach and her legs had tangled with his.

Adrenaline surged through his veins at the sight, banishing his lingering sleepiness in an instant. He just barely stopped himself from throwing her across the room in the sudden surprise. What the hell was she _doing_ here?

A beat later, memories of last night came back in a rush. He couldn't help but let out a quiet groan as he let himself fall back into the couch. Garrus chuckled, earning the turian an arch look from the commander. Internally, Shepard was surprised how well Garrus had recovered. It had only been a few days, and already there was no sign of the turian's cybernetic replacements, save the eye. The scars were not going away anytime soon, but at least they covered everything. Still, that didn't give the idiot a free pass. "It's not what it looks like," Shepard said in a fierce whisper, unable to stop the embarrassment from leaking into his voice or his face.

"Oh?" Garrus asked, clearly highly amused. "What is it then?"

"Well, uh," Shepard began, carefully trying to slip out from under the quarian without waking her. She didn't need to go through that embarrassment. "I ca-"

"Hmm, John," Tali mumbled in her sleep. Her grip tightened on his shirt and stopped his movement cold. "Come back t' bed."

Shepard froze. It's okay, he told himself, she's only dreaming. It didn't mean anything, he was just the closest person for her to latch on to. He distantly noticed his cheeks had lit up in a brilliant blush, but he was far too busy being shocked, appalled and worried by her proclamation to do much of anything about it.

Unfortunately, Garrus didn't have that problem. Loud snorts of suppressed laughter filled the room as the turian tried to control his mirth. Taloned hands clutched at his midsection and he visibly shook with the force of his laughter.

"Garrus, it is not polite to intrude on a couple's private time." EDI's voice came through the room's speaker as, with a soft popping noise, her avatar sprung from the terminal against the wall. Garrus began sputtering helplessly in response.

Shepard, his mind finally beginning to move once more, groaned heavily. Of course the omnipresent AI saw this whole disaster-in-the-making. And of course she did nothing to stop it. His head fell back and he glared upside down at her avatar. "Damnit EDI. Don't encourage him. You know as well as I do that's not the case."

"My apologies, Commander," she replied, her voice cordially regretful. "Someone seems to have replaced my mercy subroutines while they were restoring my voice files."

Shepard groaned again. He couldn't even pull off a simple prank without it blowing up in his face. His hand not wrapped around Tali came up and made a rude gesture at the hologram. The avatar flickered momentarily, and EDI's voice sounded reproving as she said, "That was not very nice, Commander."

"Bite me," he snapped quietly. Despite his efforts though, the noise seemed too much for Tali to continue sleeping. A quiet noise of satisfaction heralded her awakening, moments before she began to stretch and press against him in simultaneously intriguing and unwanted ways. She finished her stretching in a few moments however, and then curled tighter against Shepard's chest. She burrowed her helmet into his chest once more and sighed happily. The commander blushed harder.

"Goo- Good morning, Tali," Garrus chirped cheerfully through his laughter. "How'd you sleep?"

The quarian went very, very still. Her head slowly pulled out of Shepard's chest and turned toward Garrus, then with obvious hesitation, she turned to face his head. The glowing points of her eyes bored into Shepard's own for a second that stretched to eternity, then she asked in a voice full of dread, "This isn't a dream, is it?"

Shepard slowly shook his head. A low tremble rushed through her body, obvious to Shepard only because of their closeness, and before he could react, the girl flung herself off him like she'd been scalded. She tumbled to the ground with a thud, to the audible amusement of Garrus, and began babbling apologies to him as she climbed to her feet. "Sorry! I'm sorry! Oh _Keelah_, I am so sorry, Shepard! I didn't... er... I wasn't, I mean, you weren't... uhh... you were just so _comfortable_."

"Duly noted, Tali," EDI said as Shepard buried his face in his hands. "I will begin manufacture of a pillow matching Shepard's physical shape for you."

"What? No!" she exclaimed, completely flustered. "I couldn't use that, it would be weird! And totally not the same thing at all. There's no way a pillow could be anywhere near as nice! And," she paused as she realized Garrus was staring at her with a wicked grin. "And I should stop talking now," she said meekly.

"It is alright," EDI said with an air of cheer. "That was a joke."

The quarian made a strangled sound and went rigid at the admission before deflating where she stood. Shepard pushed himself up into a sitting position and shot a look at Garrus. "Go ahead," he said resignedly. There was nothing he could do to get out of the inevitable teasing now. "Get it out of your system."

Garrus' one organic eye glittered brightly with amusement. "I wouldn't dare make fun of such a lovely couple," he said, his serious tone belied by the laughter in his eyes and the shaking of his shoulders. He winked at Shepard, ignoring the way Tali seemed to shrink in on herself. "I'll save that for a rainy day."

"Somehow, I am not encouraged," Shepard grumbled with a scowl.

The turian nodded approvingly. "Good. You shouldn't be." Garrus turned and walked to the door with a cheery wave. One foot set down through it, then he looked at Shepard over his shoulder with a predatory grin. "You'll be hearing about this for a whi-."

A small figurine pinged off the side of the turian's head then, pulling a yelp of pain from him. He spun around to face the source at the same time Shepard did. Tali stood beside the lounge's table, still bearing her _paisho_ board, and her arm was still extended from the throw. "What was that for?!" Garrus asked petulantly as he gingerly rubbed his skull.

"You deserved it," the quarian said matter of factly. She crossed her arms over her chest and pointedly turned away with a huff.

A chuckle fought its way out of Shepard at the sight of her indignation. "She's got you there, Garrus."

Showing a degree of sense Shepard hadn't expected of him, Garrus held up his hands in mock surrender and backed through the door. His mandibles twitched in amusement and he gave an exaggerated bow to the quarian. "I'll just leave you two lovebirds to it then."

Another figurine bounced off the door, right where his face had been, as it closed. Tali huffed loudly and threw herself into a seat at the table. "_Bosh'tet_," she muttered under her breath. She looked over at Shepard and her voice turned embarrassed. "Sorry Commander, I didn't mean t-"

He held up his hand to cut off her apologies. "It's alright Tali," he said with a heavy breath. "It was an accident." He gave her a crooked smile. "Forget it ever happened?"

"Yes," she said in a strange tone. Something Shepard couldn't identify hung thick in her voice. "Forget it..."

Shepard sent her a querying look, but when she ignored it, he nodded decisively. "Alright. I'm gonna go wash up and grab breakfast then. Want some help cleaning up in here?"

"No," she almost shouted. He gave her a strange look and she ducked her head sheepishly. "I mean no, I've got it. Thanks for the offer though."

Shepard studied her for several seconds, but ultimately shrugged. It was her business. "See you later then," he said and walked out the door.

* * *

"Seriously?" the commander's incredulous voice filled the cockpit of the _Normandy_. He turned the copilot's chair to face Joker and cocked an eyebrow. "They really thought like that?"

Joker snorted. "Yea, kinda ridiculous, huh?" he shot back with a grin. "The end of the twentieth was weird like that. Most of the pre-War movies, games, the whole culture really, was all worried about the 'AI revolution'." He shook his head with a pitying smile. "Silly bastards had no idea what they were talking about."

"It is understandable though," EDI offered. "Computers were a new technology. It is a natural human response to fear the unknown."

"I guess," Joker admitted grudgingly with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But c'mon, you don't need to be an engineer to know using human bodies as batteries is all kinds of stupid. No machine would be that dumb."

"Indeed," EDI agreed immediately. "It would be far more efficient, and conducive to our goals, to simply use you as a source of menial labor." She paused for a brief instant, just long enough for Shepard to realize what she was implying. His eyes went wide and he opened his mouth to respond just as EDI continued. "That was a joke."

"Riiiight," the pilot said, drawing the word out with a skeptical tone. He turned to Shepard. "Did you mess with her humor files too?"

"That last modifications to my interaction subroutines is dated two months ago," EDI offered helpfully. "I believe I learned it from you, Helmsman Moreau."

Shepard groaned. "Great," he said with all the sarcasm he could muster. "That's just what the galaxy needs. More Jokers."

"Eh," Joker said with a shrug. "Can't be any worse than half-quarian mini-Shepards." His expression turned slyly innocent at the commander's annoyed grimace. "So when's the wedding?"

Shepard groaned again. "Does the _entire_ ship know about that already?"

"No," EDI answered him cheerfully. "The night crew has not yet awakened, and so have not been informed."

The commander had to fight the sudden urge to break something. He blew out an angry breath and settled for a glare at the AI's avatar as the bars on the orb spread out into a facsimile of a smug grin. She made no indication she noticed, that he could see anyway, but he got the distinct impression she was rather amused by it nonetheless. He scowled at her and sighed heavily. There was nothing he could do about it at this point. He'd just have to cope.

One hand came up to cradle his head. A few seconds later, he peaked between his fingers and sent another glare at EDI. "I don't like you."

The avatar rotated slightly into a bizarre half bow maneuver and Joker snorted. "You don't like anyone," he said brightly. "Well, other than quarian girls, apparently."

"I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?" he asked rhetorically.

EDI answered him anyway. "That is statistically unlikely. Most friendly human interaction involves this kind of teasing in some form."

"Great," Shepard muttered under his breath. He stewed in silence for almost a minute, and Joker left him alone the whole time, content to mind his own business. Shepard couldn't help but feel a pang of worry for Tali. Hopefully she'd be able to put up with the embarrassment this morning had caused. It'd been an accident after all, and she hadn't seemed to take Garrus' teasing very well.

He shook his head. There was no use in worrying about it. He'd just have to give the crew something else to talk about. Which was fortunate, because he had been planning something that would do that anyway. He didn't bother to suppress the probably-maniacal grin that split his lips at the thought. This was going to be fun.

"Uhh, Commander?" Joker asked uncertainly. Shepard glanced over to find him looking decidedly nervous. "I'm not gonna need to start running, am I?"

Shepard's grin faded slightly, into something saner, and he shrugged. "Well, you're going to _want_ to, soon enough."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the pilot demanded incredulously as Shepard stood up.

The commander pulled out a small device and placed it on the chair he had just vacated. "Not much," he answered as he pushed a button on the device. A slow banjo tune filled the cockpit. It would have been pleasant, if not for one thing: each note was struck just the slightest bit off-beat. It created the perfect dissonance to turn the music from soothing to grating. "Just that you'll want to follow me out."

Joker, his hands clamped over his ears tried to stand, but his torso just barely lifted from the seat before it was stopped cold. His eyes went wide and he tried again, only to meet the same result, and shot a look at the Commander.

Shepard just pulled out a tube of super glue to waggle at him. Behind him, the music picked up vocals. A dirge-like voice filled the room, slowly belting out the words, "10,000 bottles of beer on the wall. 10,000 bottles of beer."

Joker glared at the commander. "Not cool!" he snapped. "This is not cool, Commander!"

Shepard grinned unrepentantly and nodded. "Yea," he agreed. "It's really not. I'm gonna have to soundproof the cockpit before someone else gets annoyed by it." He shrugged and started walking toward the door.

"Oh c'mon!" Joker cried, trying, and failing, yet again to pull himself out of his chair. Shepard watched over his shoulder as the pilot then tried impotently to reach the music player on the other chair. "This is cruel and unusual!"

"Which just makes it more fun," Shepard shot back. He stepped through the door and turned around, one hand hovering over the control panel that would seal off the cockpit. "I did say I'd get you back for that stunt you pulled before Noveria. I'll be back for you in a couple hours."

"Don't you da-!" Joker began, only to be cut off as a semi-transparent barrier slammed into being. Blessed silence filled the hallway and Shepard waved cheerily as Joker began making obscene gestures at him from his position in the cockpit. He calmly and deliberately mouthed the words 'have fun' to the pilot, turned around and wandered off.

He walked through the bridge of the _Normandy_, to uproarious laughter, congratulatory cheers, and no small amount of teasing comments from the rest of the present crew. He made a production out of receiving their acclaim and bowing flamboyantly before forging a path to the elevator.

"Shepard," EDI's voice caught him as he entered the box.

"What is it, EDI?"

"Helmsman Moreau wishes me to inform you that you are a pile of expletive deleted refuse that will rue this day."

"Did he really say that?" Shepard asked with a laugh.

"I paraphrased slightly but that was his intent," EDI admitted nonchalantly. "However, on a personal note, I must congratulate you on a job well done."

* * *

Shepard hung loosely from the ceiling, held aloft by the spider module of his armor, as he crept carefully toward his objective. He was so close to victory he could taste it, all he needed to do was cross the last twenty feet. A sudden clatter from the corner of the room caused him to freeze. As stealthily as he could, he flipped himself over and turned to the source, only to find Garrus rounding the corner of the room's last internal wall. He grinned as the turian swept his rifle over the room and crept further in. Perfect, he thought gleefully. Nobody ever looks up.

As quietly as he could, he braced his back against the ceiling above him. A sudden lessening of the pressure on his hands let him know the micro hooks there had grabbed it, freeing his hands so he could fire. He smiled widely and pulled his rifle out, but before he had made it even halfway through the motion, the turian's gun kicked up and pointed right at him.

Shepard's eyes went wide and he slapped at his belt, turning off the spider module even as Garrus squeezed the trigger. Plasma shot past him so closely he could feel the heat as it splashed against the ceiling. Burning shards of concrete fell alongside him, filling the air with dancing light and choking dust as he slammed into a desk in one of the decrepit cubicles below him.

The desk collapsed under his weight, the rotten wood and old plastic unable to take the sudden force. Shepard's breath was forced out of him in a rush from the impact and his vision swam. He pushed past the feeling with the ease of long practice and rolled over, only to find himself face-to-barrel with Garrus' plasma rifle.

"Little tip, Commander," the turian said delightedly. Above the rifle, his one organic eye glittered with humor. "Turians think in three dimensions."

Shepard had just enough time to groan disappointedly as the rifle flashed with deadly green and the sim went black. Damn cheating aliens.

"And that's how you do it!" Garrus crowed triumphantly as the world rearranged itself.

In the span of an eye blink, Shepard suddenly found himself standing upright again, only a few feet from the boasting turian. A brief rush of vertigo struck as his body forcibly reoriented itself from the abrupt shift in gravity. It passed quickly though. More than quickly enough to, to Shepard's displeasure, pay attention as Garrus continued. "You let the guy with one eye spot you Shepard. For shame."

"Uh huh," the commander shot back in a tone of sarcastic agreement. "One eye. Right. It's not at all like you've got a bionic eye that can see in every known range of the EM spectrum."

"Exactly," Garrus happily agreed with a nod. "It can only see in _most_ known ranges."

The urge to bury his face in his palm nearly overwhelmed Shepard. Instead though, he made an elaborate gesture toward the turian and bowed toward the side, earning him a puzzled look from the turian. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a round of applause for the comedy act."

Exactly on cue, a stock recording of applause echoed through the blank simulator. Shepard's lips quirked into a grin, even as Garrus began to sputter. "Thanks EDI," he said.

"You are welcome, Shepard," she replied cheerily. "Would you like me to prepare another sim?"

Shepard glanced at his turian opposite questioningly, and got an eager nod in response. "Sounds good EDI."

Without another word, the tiny pinpricks of light, millions of them, came to life all around them. The breathtaking tableau of the Milky Way spread out around him in all directions, impressing upon him just how insignificant he was in the grand scheme of things. Beneath their feet, a beautiful blue-green gem of a planet turned lazily through space, just barely quick enough to follow the motion.

With a tug he couldn't feel, Shepard was flung through the vacuum of space, directly toward a supercarrier holding in orbit above the planet below. He had to suppress an instinctive flinch as he passed into and then through the walls of the carrier until he and Garrus came skittering to a stop in the park at the heart of the carrier.

"This scenario is a cooperative emergency response mission," EDI announced calmly as their surroundings stopped spinning. "Simulating a total systems failure of chryssalid containment approximately eighteen hours ago. Your objective is to activate the purge systems and cleanse the infestation. The last message from survivors was eight hours ago. This is a Code Black situation."

Shepard's hud burst to life with a map of the carrier and their objective point. He scrunched up his nose slightly as he realized the map didn't match a real carrier, but shrugged it off. EDI was being paranoid about information security, he'd just have to deal with it. He glanced over at Garrus to his right. "You up for this?"

"For fighting through potentially over a hundred thousand angry mutant rachni that want to literally rape my face?" The turian's mandibles flexed into a resigned expression. He shrugged. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Excellent," EDI replied. "Scenario begins... Now."

The pair took off running as soon as she finished speaking, barrelling toward their destination as fast as they possibly could. Neither wanted to spend any longer on a ship full of chryssalids, even virtual ones, than they absolutely had to.

A low, almost too quiet to hear, rustling reached Shepard's ears as they reached the sealed door and took up firing positions on either side. "On three," the commander muttered to Garrus. The turian nodded and Shepard began counting.

When he hit three, he slapped the door control and the very instant it opened, a high-pitched skree pierced his ears. A sharp clattering echoed out of the hallway, the telltale sound of a charging chryssalid. It screamed again, a piercing sound that reached deep into the most primal parts of Shepard's brain and demanded he flee. He fought it down through sheer force of will and rolled out of cover just as Garrus did.

Shepard shared a meaningful glance with the turian and they both cut loose, filling the corridor with plasma. The chryssalid rushed blindly into their fire, ignoring the way chitin and flesh alike melted and ran like wax. Piece by piece, the chryssalid was torn apart until finally, it could take no more. It died with a scream, a piercing cry that echoed down the tunnel, repeating itself again and again as it reached into the distance.

A chittering cry of fury raced back through the corridors, swiftly gaining strength as more and more of the creatures joined in the frenzy. Shepard cursed loudly.

"That is just not fair," Garrus agreed heartily. He shook his head. "Let's go."

Shepard nodded and charged down the corridor, kicking aside the chryssalid's corpse as he went. He led the way in a mad rush through the labyrinthine corridors with the roars of furious bugs growing louder with every step. He kept one eye on the map and one eye on the path as he ran, forcing himself to ignore his body's demands for rest. They didn't have to run for too long though, and only a few minutes later he could see the door to their destination.

"In here!" he shouted, pointing it out. "Controls!"

As if it was waiting for just that cue, the door exploded outward, torn apart by the unreal strength of the chitinous horror beyond it. Small shards of metal whizzed through the hallway, bouncing off the walls in a shower of deadly shrapnel. Shepard threw everything he had into stopping, but it wasn't enough. His momentum carried him straight into the arms of the abomination.

Luckily, it was as unprepared for him as he was for it, and instead of being violently torn apart, his weight threw it to the ground beneath him. On instinct, he grabbed the thing's head and torqued it as violently as he could before it had a chance to react. Artificial muscle strained for a long second, but not even chryssalid chitin could withstand the full might of a titan strength module, and he tore off its head with a shout of triumph.

"Incoming from the rear!" Garrus' shout grabbed his attention the next second, forcing Shepard to push himself back up to his feet. His eyes went wide at what he saw. Dozens of chryssalids stampeded down the corridor in a furious tide. Beady yellow eyes fixed on either him or Garrus, the promise of an agonizing death clear in their hungry gaze. Shepard raised his rifle and joined Garrus in raining plasma into the approaching horde.

They may as well have been firing spitballs for all the good it did though. One Chryssalid would fall, only for three more to trample it in their rush to get at the fresh meat. They were slowing the things down, but they weren't making any real headway like this.

"Inside!" the commander barked at his companion.

Garrus nodded briefly before pulling out a grenade and throwing it down the corridor. A second later, just as the front ranks of the chryssalids reached it, it unleashed its fury. The corridor served to contain the blast nearly perfectly, utterly decimating the front ranks of the horde. Unfortunately, it also sent the rest of the blast back towards them. Turian and human alike stampeded through the broken door in a rush, bare inches ahead of the storm of shrapnel and flame.

Inside the room was utterly bare, save for a plain podium, utterly free of decoration. Embedded in the top of the podium was a keyboard and a screen proudly displaying three words in large, unfriendly letters. "Enter authorization code," Garrus read aloud as he took up position beside the thing. "What in the spirits' name is the code?"

"Knowing EDI," Shepard answered distractedly as he began firing out of the door back at the recovered wave of chryssalids. "Probably something aggravating."

"Right," the former detective agreed. "Let's see... ' R'" A harsh buzz rang out, echoed a moment later by angry cries from the chryssalids.

Shepard swore again and leaned around the door to pour plasma into their advance, but not even the corpses of their dead slowed them anymore. The horde had split, sending huge numbers of them running along the walls and ceiling, freeing themselves from having to worry about tripping hazards. He did what he could to drive them back, but there were just too many. In a matter of seconds, he was forced to abandon his position at the door, stumbling back as one of the bugs tried to stab him through the wall.

"Hurry up!" he barked as he filled the doorway with plasma from where he lay on the floor. Another buzz sounded, pulling a bloodthirsty chitter from seemingly every single one of the crazed bugs.

"I'm trying!" Garrus snapped back. He slammed a fist into the podium. "It's not like she tol-" He froze mid-syllable, abruptly enough that Shepard couldn't stop himself from glancing over in concern.

"Of course..." he breathed in realization. The turian's taloned fingers danced across the keyboard, tapping out a sequence of five characters in a fraction of a second.

A bright chime rang out over the cries of the chryssalids and the roar of plasma fire, and a second later a wave of white fire burned through the rear wall, consuming everything it touched. Shepard had just enough time to feel a sliver of worry before it was upon him, sublimating his surroundings into an unending perfect whiteness.

"Damnit EDI," he grumbled into the infinite white void. "Did you _have_ to kill us too?"

"No," the AI answered matter-of-factly. "But it was more fun this way."

"She's got you there, Commander," Garrus chimed in unhelpfully. The turian abruptly appeared beside Shepard and nodded a greeting. "We weren't going to make it out of that room alive anyway. By the way EDI," he called out. "That was clever with the code. I almost didn't figure it out."

"I will have to make the next one more difficult then," she answered with a hint of challenge in her tone.

Garrus's mandibles worked into the turian equivalent of a smirk. "Looking forward to it."

"Hold on a minute," Shepard interrupted with an annoyed glower. "What was the code?"

"You mean the great Commander Shepard hasn't solved the riddle?" Garrus asked in mock surprise. He turned his smirk on the commander. "In that case, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

"Damnit Garrus," he said with a roll of his eyes. "Just tel-"

"Commander," EDI interrupted suddenly in a businesslike tone. "Nihlus is requesting your presence in the comm room. The Citadel Council has news regarding the search for Saren."

Shepard's mouth worked soundlessly for a few seconds as it struggled to catch up with the sudden redirection of his mind. His argument with Garrus was completely forgotten in the rush of excitement. Finally, another lead, and this one from the Council itself. Maybe they could finally catch up with the bastard.

The sim went black as he disconnected his suit and began to strip out of it. "Tell him I'm on my way, EDI."

* * *

The door to the comm room slid open without fanfare, abruptly stopping the murmur of conversation between the occupants. The resident Spectre turned away from the trio of holograms representing the Citadel Council and nodded a greeting to the commander. Shepard returned the nod easily and charged ahead with his normal observance of diplomatic niceties. "Nihlus, Councillors. EDI said you have something for me?"

"Straight to business then," the turian councillor said with a curt nod of acknowledgment and a glimmer of approval in his eyes. "We have received information on Saren. We believed you would be interested."

"Damn straight," Shepard agreed immediately. He stepped up beside Nihlus and crossed his arms over his chest. "What've you got?"

"We dispatched several members of the Salarian Special Tasks Group, or STG, to operate parallel to your investigation," the salarian councillor explained. "Yesterday, we received a message from one such group of operatives in the Traverse. Unfortunately, the message was garbled to the point of uselessness."

"So we don't actually have anything?" Shepard asked with a raised brow. He had to admit to no small amount of confusion. Surely the leaders of the largest galactic power had better things to do with their time than bother him over nothing.

"The message was unintelligible, but it was sent on a channel reserved for mission critical communications," the salarian councillor countered, the first glimmers of heat entering into his voice. "We do not know what they were trying to say, but we do know that it is related to Saren, and that it is important."

Shepard nodded thoughtfully and glanced at Nihlus. "What do you think? Is it worth checking out?"

The turian nodded without hesitation. "The STG is rarely wrong, and it is more than what we have now."

"I was thinking more about a trap," the commander replied with a grimace. "This sounds like the perfect bait to lure us into an ambush."

"STG security has not been penetrated in over a century," the salarian councillor said firmly, his expression mulish.

"But if anyone were to do it," the turian councillor picked up smoothly, ignoring the sharp glance from his amphibious colleague. "It would be Saren. It is possible the message is a trap, but we, _I_ believe it to be legitimate. In either case, we will be committing our own resources to investigate as soon as possible."

"Fair enough," Shepard said. He weighed the options himself, but no matter how he approached it, there was really only one answer he could give. "We'll check it out then. Where are we headed?"

"The signal originated from the planet Virmire," the salarian councillor said, a faint trace of umbrage in his voice. "It is a garden world in the Sentry Omega cluster along the Terminus border of the Traverse."

"Thanks," Shepard said with a nod. "Was there anything else?"

"No," the asari councillor said. "That will be all. Good luck, Commander."

The other two councillors echoed the sentiment and all three holograms died, leaving Nihlus and Shepard alone. "Twenty credits says the team's dead and we're walking into a trap," the commander offered into the ensuing silence.

"I will pass. That is what I believe you humans call a 'sucker bet'," he said with far too much cheer, given the subject. He sobered quickly however and gave Shepard a grave look. "There was one thing the Council neglected to mention about the message, Commander. We managed to decode two words of it."

"And what would those be?"

"'Krogan' and 'experiment'."


	22. Shadow Games

**Chapter 21: Shadow Games**

"Well, at least we know we're in the right place," Shepard said, relief clear in his voice. The _Normandy_'s CIC display had been tuned to show the hyperwave readout from the one-lightyear-distant Virmire, and it was clear from just a glance that if the STG message had been a trap, it was the most amateurish one he'd ever seen. Half a dozen geth vessels, cruisers mostly, sat in high orbit over the planet and were making no effort to disguise themselves. There was no way they could ambush anyone before they had a chance to flee.

No, this was a protection detail, meant to scare off anyone that got curious. Probably why the STG came here in the first place, Shepard realized after a moment's thought. That raised the question though. Just what were the geth protecting?

The implications of the two words of the message that had survived did not paint a pretty picture. Experiments on krogan only meant one thing in his mind: a genophage cure. And if Saren gave them a cure, the krogan were sure to flock to his banner. Shepard had to suppress a shiver at the thought. With a krogan horde at his command, Saren may not even need to bring back the Reapers to kill everything in the galaxy. That couldn't be allowed to happen.

A low hum from beside him snapped Shepard from his thoughts and pulled his gaze over to Captain Pressly. The captain's gaze never wavered from the hologram, but he somehow noted Shepard's attention nonetheless and spoke in a contemplative tone, implicitly asking for opinions "This will be a difficult insertion. The Wraith system cannot run indefinitely, and we can't win against these numbers. We'll need to be stealthy. Our best bet is to portal past their cordon with the cloak active, but they will know we are in the area. A dedicated search may be able to find us."

Shepard grunted his acknowledgement of the captain's words. "It's better than giving them a glowing blue line that points straight to us though."

"Yes," Pressly answered resignedly. "And it must be done." He tapped a control on one of the armrests of his chair, activating his comm link to the cockpit. "Joker, get us a portal past the geth and turn on the cloak. We're going in quiet."

"Aye aye," the pilot answered immediately. Shepard turned his attention back to the display, just in time to see the telltale distortion of a portal forming in a low orbit above the planet. The geth ships reacted instantly, those in range orienting their weapons on it, and firing,in a matter of seconds, while the others began racing along their orbits to get into range.

Thankfully, Joker was reacting just as quickly. A sudden feeling of sharp acceleration hit Shepard like a punch to the gut as a holographic of the _Normandy_ came catapulting through the hole in reality. It weaved and swerved wildly, missing the first wave of incoming fire by less than a kilometer, each motion on screen reflected in a low level force deep in the commander's bones.

Finally, mercifully, the erratic motions stopped after only a few minutes, replaced by the smooth glide of a steady flight. The _Normandy_ leveled off and made haste to put as much space between them and the geth as possible. They had just made it a quarter rotation away from the geth when Joker's voice came over the comm once more, "We're clear. Doesn't look like they can..."

The way the pilot just trailed off like that would normally be a cause for concern. In this case though, Shepard figured he knew exactly why he had, and he couldn't blame the pilot. Within a minute of the _Normandy_ settling into its low orbit, a two kilometer long mechanical cuttlefish had risen from the ground and set a direct course for the portal's former location.

Shepard had conflicting feelings at the sight. On one hand, Nazara was here. That meant Saren was too, and that whatever they were doing, it was important. He finally had a chance to stop this whole thing before the reapers could start their comeback tour, and he would give damn near anything to do that.

On the other hand, Nazara was here. That meant their mission had just become infinitely more difficult. He wasn't arrogant enough to think a single frigate with a stripped down _Annihilator_ cannon could take a dreadnought as horrifically advanced as the reaper clearly was, even without its geth escorts. And without the aerial advantage, ground operations suddenly came under threat of orbital bombardment.

He pushed aside the worry with a fierce scowl. Whatever was going on here, it needed to be stopped, now. And the first step to that was to figure out what that was, which meant finding the STG team. "EDI," he asked, forcing his voice to hide his apprehensions under a layer of determination. "Have you found anything that points toward the STG team?"

"No Commander," the AI replied immediately. "There is no visible sign of them. However, if there were, it is highly likely they would have already been destroyed. It is probable they are alive and in hiding."

"Damn," Shepard muttered with a frown. "How are we supposed to contact them then?"

"I recommend a ping using Citadel encryption on the same channel on which they sent the message," EDI answered. "Unfortunately, such a maneuver will likely draw the attention of enemy forces."

"Any other ideas?" Pressly asked calmly, though Shepard thought he could see hints that the man was chewing on the inside of his lip.

"None with an acceptable probability of success."

The captain was silent for a long moment, sighed and nodded. "Do it. Joker, get ready for evasive maneuvers."

The pilot called back an acknowledgment even as the ping went out. Shepard could tell this because that's when every single one of the ships in orbit started hauling straight toward their position. Even worse, they couldn't leave without risking missing the response, and that would leave them back at square one. He cursed under his breath and prayed the wraith system would hold up under scrutiny. Nothing had been able to see through it yet, but before Noveria, nothing had been able to stop psionics either. Where Reapers were involved, there was no certainty.

A thick cloud of tension hung cloyingly in the air, forming an almost tangible presence that loomed over the bridge. Every passing second without a response saw the enemy ships get closer, and the tension ratchet that much higher. Shepard could only watch, his hands unconsciously flexing into tight fists, as the first of the geth cruisers closed to within ten clicks of the _Normandy_'s hull.

One second passed. Two. Three. And, to a nearly-universal sigh of relief, the cruiser continued straight passed them. Shepard let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and slumped against the railing before him. "Chalk one up for human engineering," he whispered.

"Damn straight," Joker said over the comm, just as quietly. "Let's just hope the STG are alive to respond."

"They are," Pressly cut in confidently with a harsh whisper. "If the geth had found the STG, they would have been expecting someone to follow up, but their ships were too spread out to respond to a concentrated attack before they start taking losses. No, the salarians are alive. We're just waiting on them to pick up the phone."

"That is the most likely scenario," EDI said, her voice abnormally loud after the hush of the last few minutes. "But why are you whispering? There is no risk of detection. Sound cannot carry beyond the confines of the ship."

"Err..." Shepard began uncertainly. Now that he thought about it, he didn't really have a reason. It had just seemed like the thing to do. "Instinct?"

EDI made a soft chiding sound, but in defiance of his expectations, when she spoke, it was not to chide him for his primitive organic failings. "Receiving response. It is a sizeable data packet. Decryption in progress."

Eager silence settled over the bridge, a welcome change from the tight undercurrent of nervousness from moments before. Shepard waited impatiently as the AI parsed through the data, barely able to stop himself from fidgeting. He wanted to get this mission over with. The early signs all pointed to this being almost-impossibly difficult to begin with. He didn't even want to think what the inevitable monkeywrench was going to do to it.

Thankfully for his nerve, EDI spoke up before his thoughts could spiral into a darker place. "Decryption complete," she announced matter-of-factly. As she finished, the planet in the CIC's display suddenly acquired a bright red reticle on its surface, barely a hundred clicks from the _Normandy_'s position. Below the display, and just over the railing from where Shepard and Pressly were watching, appeared a small two dimensional window that showed a top-down image of a large canyon. "Commander, the STG team has requested a rendezvous at these coordinates."

Shepard's focus redoubled on on the still image, his mind automatically highlighting the best, and worst, places to be for ambushers and the ambushee. Unfortunately, there wasn't a great amount to see. The canyon was full of overhangs and it was rare to see more than a meter of ground in one stretch. The only significant opening, barely larger than the _Normandy_, was over half a click from the coordinates. All in all, it was the perfect spot for an ambush.

But his gut told him the salarians weren't there yet. They'd survived on the ground for at least a week, and with the kind of presence the geth had, there was no way they'd have managed that if they were dumb enough to broadcast their location, even if it was encrypted. No, they were hiding somewhere else, with at most a lookout at the coordinates.

"Did they say when they'd arrive?" Shepard asked aloud, ignoring the surprised glance from Pressly.

"Not exactly," EDI answered. Two more reticles, a light green color, appeared on the planet about ten clicks apart and a few dozen kilometers from the rendezvous. "The salarian team cannot reach the rendezvous without a high probability of discovery by the geth. They have requested we attack these two geth outposts as a distraction, allowing them to slip away in the ensuing chaos."

Shepard frowned sharply. Playing decoy, putting his people at severe risk, for an alien force was not something he wanted to do. Hell, nearly every aspect of his training demanded he do the opposite. A glance at Pressly confirmed that the captain didn't like it any more than he did, no one on the bridge did. It was a galling request.

But if he wanted to stop Saren and Nazara, he had to do it. He blew out a noisy breath and spoke, his voice resigned. "Sounds like we've got a plan then. Tell the squad to get suited up."

"Right away, Commander," EDI replied.

Shepard nodded and turned to Pressly. "If we can, I'd prefer to take care of them from the _Normandy_. Think we can do that?"

The captain was clearly unhappy with his orders, but was too professional to let it stop him. He kept his attention on the display and EDI helpfully brought up similar readouts to the rendezvous to showcase an orbital view of the geth camps. After several seconds of fierce contemplation, he leaned back in his chair and glanced at Shepard. "An aerial attack is the next best thing to suicide, Commander." A gesture brought small reticles around a trio of hectagonal shapes at the edge of the geth camps. "These are dedicated AA guns. Powerful ones by the look of it. We'd be able to destroy one camp sure, but I doubt we'd live to celebrate it."

"Damn," Shepard cursed under his breath. So much for easy. "Ground assault it is then. I need you to keep the ships in orbit distracted while we do it, especially Nazara. Do _not_ try to engage it if you have a choice, but keep it away from the camps."

"You've got it, Commander."

Shepard acknowledged the captain's response with a nod, then turned and sprinted for the elevator. "EDI," he called once inside. "What's Bane's status?"

"Bane is fully operational, Commander."

A feral grin split Shepard's face and he had to suppress the urge to cackle like a loon. The geth camps were both set up on fairly open ground, in large clearings between big canyons. The perfect terrain to properly introduce them to a Heavy Weapons Platform.

* * *

Shepard swept the reticle of his scope on another pass over the first geth camp and pointedly ignored the small part of him still distantly hoping he could magically see through its walls if he just wished it hard enough. At least he had a good vantage from his spot atop one of the canyons bordering the plain on which the camp sat. He was high enough that he could see over the five meter high walls with ease, roughly even with the three AA towers evenly spaced along them.

Inside the walls was an eclectic mishmash of defensive structures, a building eerily reminiscent of his barracks back in basic, and some kind of modular rooms he'd never seen before. Yet glaring in its absence was any kind of meaningful force projection capacity. There were no vehicles, no transports of any kind. It was an utterly bizarre move for a patrol hub. Which meant this wasn't a patrol hub, Shepard realized with a tinge of apprehension. Before he'd seen the place for himself, he'd assumed it was meant to guard whatever it was they were doing on Virmire, but now? Now it was obvious it was meant for something else. He just wished he knew what.

"I count 15 troopers and 3 snipers," Shepard said into the squad's comms. "Probably more in the buildings. They're dug in pretty good too. Urdnot, got any ideas to dig them out?"

Wrex rumbled a low chuckle in response. "Seven," he said with the faintest hint of sadistic glee. "So far."

"Let me guess," Ashley drawled sarcastically. "One through six are 'blow them up' and seven is 'blow them up harder'."

"Not quite," Wrex shot back, his voice confident. "Geth and quarian-"

"I _have_ a name!" Tali interrupted indignantly.

"Then prove you're worth remembering it," Wrex shot back without missing a beat. He completely ignored her outraged spluttering as he laid out his plan. "Take these demo charges and bring down the nearest tower. Make sure it falls into the camp. Me and the tank'll open the rest of the way. _Then _we blow them up."

"Sounds like a plan," Shepard cut in before Tali could start in on the krogan. "Garrus, get up on the ridge opposite me. We're on overwatch. Tali, Legion, get on it."

"Yes, Shepard," Tali said, her voice resigned. Half a minute later, he watched the cloaked outlines of the infiltration team as they sprinted over the hundred-odd meters between the canyon and the camp.

"In position," Garrus announced quietly as Tali and Legion began scaling the wall.

The pair made it up in a matter of seconds and rushed along the battlements, weaving around the oblivious heretic geth already present. Some part of Shepard found it almost amusing how well the ghost system worked, even against synthetics. Even as he had the thought though, he chided himself for it. He forcibly pulled his scope away from watching them and put it toward covering them. His scope swept back and forth, looking for any of the geth that seemed excessively curious.

Thankfully, he didn't find any by the time Legion's voice came over the comm. "Demolition charges planted. Awaiting signal."

"You ready down there?" Shepard asked.

"Say the word, Commander," Ashley answered him eagerly. "We're all set."

He nodded with a fierce grin, despite the fact that she couldn't see it. "On my mark." He swapped his comm over to a private connection to the other sniper. "Call your targets Garrus."

"Right sniper," the turian responded instantly. "Then middle."

"I've got the left then." He waited a beat, then offered, "Lowest kill count buys the first round tonight?"

He could hear the turian's grin when he responded. "You're on, Shepard."

"Just try to keep up," he shot back teasingly. He switched his mic back to the squad comm and continued. "Go in three... two... one... mark."

Shepard's finger tightened on the trigger before the words were even out of his mouth. A sharp whine and crack broke through the still air as a glob of glowing green death spat from his rifle and crossed the distance between him and his target in the blink of an eye. The sniper's shields flared and shattered in the same heartbeat. Plasma splashed against the geth's fragile frame and vented its fury in a single, explosive instant. Pieces of the geth's torso were flung from its shelter in a shower of half-molten shrapnel, raining down on the troopers around it.

The geth weren't given any time to react to that however, for the very next instant, the base of one of the camp's three anti-aircraft towers erupted in great gouts of fire with a bonerattling boom. A visible ripple of force shot up the entire length of the tower, twisting and deforming the metal structure with loud, piercing squeals. A booming crack filled the air and the tower abruptly dropped a full meter.

Geth platforms rushed away from the tower as it squealed again and began to topple. One of the walls bracing the tower held for a brief instant, but its hold was shattered as the tower began to spin. The structure broke free with a snap and slammed into the ground, through two of the modular buildings and the barracks. It hit with a resounding boom that Shepard could feel even from his vantage point, and threw up an enormous cloud of dust and wreckage that completely shrouded the inside of the camp.

At the same time, a two-foot-wide column of orange-red light lanced out of the canyon and speared the weakened wall where small fragments of the base of the tower still stood. The beam struck with the force of a bomb as one of the fiercest weapons of a dead species vented its fury at the command of its usurpers. A storm of fire and shrapnel flew from the point of impact, utterly destroying the single geth trooper unable to get away in time.

In the beam's wake, Bane led the rest of the squad in a blitz straight for the newly formed opening, ignoring the small pockets of flaming grass ignited by sheer proximity to the naked power of its pulse cannon. It glided smoothly across the open ground, the tip of its oblong shape never diverging from its path, even as its cannon methodically blew apart the walls with one blast after another.

Shepard watched the chaos unfold and couldn't fight the satisfied grin spreading across his face. Welcome to superior firepower, he thought fiercely at the heretics as one of Bane's blasts scored a direct hit on a platform atop the wall and completely obliterated it. He trained his rifle on the next geth over and sent another round downrange. The plasma bored into his target's head and exploded violently, throwing the geth's broken remains off of the battlements and down into the settling dust cloud below.

"Commander!" Tali's worried cry came over the comm a second later. "We've got a problem!"

The urgent tone in her voice snapped his attention away from picking off the geth Bane and the assault team were keeping pinned and out into the murky center of the camp. He swapped his visor over to thermal, but the fires, distance and flying plasma made it impossible to tell what Tali as referring to. He turned it off with a silent curse. "What is- _Holy shit_."

Before he'd made it even halfway through his question, three massive, hulking forms came charging out of the heart of the dust. The things had clearly once been krogan, and just as clearly had become _something else_. At over three meters tall, and two wide, they were bigger than any krogan Shepard had ever heard of, and every step of their three-toed, vaguely reptilian, digitigrade legs shook the ground. Thick plates had been fused with their natural armor, forming an unholy carapace of bone and metal over nearly their entire bodies. Thick wires and tubes led from this armor and plunged into the small areas of uncovered, blue-veined flesh, forever entwining the creatures with their armor.

Bane didn't even pause. Before the creatures, 'Ogres' Shepard off-handedly decided to call them, were even half visible, its pulse cannon was unleashed on the trio. The beam hit the central thing and exploded with a flash and another column of dust.

A beat passed as the dust settled, only to reveal the ogres alive and well. The center one's chest glowed a bright cherry red and orange steam vented out from small cracks throughout it, but before Shepard's eyes the cracks visibly sealed themselves. He gaped, unable to do anything else as he watched sectoid-fucking metal _heal_. The ogres fixed their dead, white eyes on the assault team in a hateful, furious glare and bellowed a challenge.

Even from over a hundred meters away, Shepard nearly panicked at the sound. It reached deep into his being and triggered his every flight instinct, demanded he run from such overwhelming power. Unfortunately for them, Shepard favored the 'fight' response. He took a deep breath and _let go_.

Rage, free of the shackles of control, suffused Shepard's entire being and he welcomed it with open arms. A purple whirlwind erupted around him as he reached for his powers. The power of his mind, more than even he had ever managed to call upon before, thrummed heavily through the air in faint streamers. He barely suppressed a mad cackle. Dear god, the new psionic amp was amazing.

A thought sent a vast stream of psionic might racing through the air, where it slammed into all three of the ogres with the force of a starship. The psionic wave picked them up with contemptuous ease and threw them to the side. "Me and Wrex on the big guys!" Shepard called over the comm, his voice leaving no room for argument. "The rest of you handle the geth!"

The assault squad, sans krogan, knew better than to argue and rushed ahead into the camp proper. Shepard dismissed them from his thoughts. He'd need to focus to deal with his new targets.

The ogres clambered to their feet, just in time to take a rain of missiles from Wrex. An echoing, screeching cry filled the air as the creatures were consumed in a rapid series of fireballs. The ogres charged through it without even noticing, completely ignoring the flames that licked along their flesh. They bellowed furious roars and blitzed at Wrex in a berserk fury.

The krogan's heavy plasma roared and spat wave after wave of plasma at the rushing horde, to absolutely no effect. The ogres shrugged off fire that would cripple most starships without even breaking stride. It was unreal.

It also made Shepard's job that much more important. "Pin them down!" the commander barked at Wrex. "I'm gonna try something!"

Blue light burst out of Wrex's skin in response, casting the krogan into stark relief against the green grass around him. One of his hands lashed out toward the ogres and clenched into a tight fist before punching toward the ground.

Alongside the motion, a semi-transparent disk of brilliant blue light appeared over the ogres' heads and fell to the earth like the hand of god. The ogres, showing more thought than ever before, stopped as one and braced themselves just as it reached their heads. Their legs buckled under the force, driving all three to their knees in the opening move, but then it stopped. Slowly, unsteadily, the ogres fought the pressure, and started to win.

That was alright though, Shepard thought with a bloodthirsty grin. They'd already stopped.

The next instant, a chaotic maelstrom of psionic energy burst to life around the ogres as Shepard shaped his will into a rift. Piece by piece, the ogres were torn apart. Metal plates cracked and shattered under the tearing forces, even as bone cracked and splintered to fill the air with deadly shards. Thick orange blood was flung wildly about, turning the cracked and torn earth into a thick sludge that only further ensnared the ogres.

And still they fought to stand. Another wave of hot fury shot through Shepard at that realization. He was not going to let those bastards live through this.

A thought Wrex appeared to share, for wave after wave of biotic force slammed down into the ogres, driving them back down into the muck. Low, keening cries rang out as the creatures struggled against a biotic jackhammer with their already grievous injuries.

Shepard scowled. It still wasn't working, he'd have to try something else. He reluctantly relented on the rift, letting Wrex keep them pinned as he shifted his focus from utter annihilation to surgical strikes. Psi lances, one for each of the creatures, shot from Shepard and slammed into their heads. The full might of Shepard's fury was concentrated into an area smaller than a credit chit, and not even the ogres' absurd resilience could protect them from that.

Orange blood and viscera geysered out of the ogres' new blowholes and they fell to the ground and lay still.

Shepard studied the bodies for a long moment, only now noticing the slight throbbing in his temples of low-level psionic overuse. "God, I love this amp," he muttered to himself then called Wrex. "They dead?"

"Looks like," Wrex answered, his breathing heavy. A wave of heavy plasma fire washed over the bodies and Wrex grunted in satisfaction as there was no reaction. Shepard closed his eyes and let his head fall forward to rest against the ground. If he never fought those things again, it would be too soon.

The commander lay atop the bluff for a long, blissful second, but he knew he couldn't stay like that. He still had a job to do. "Big guys're dead," he announced over the squad comm. "Sitrep."

"Almost done," Ashley answered him. "Just one left and no injuries on our end."

Shepard blew out a breath of relief. That was good. He looked up and trained his rifle on the camp as he asked, "Where at?"

A beat later, his hud painted the target, a geth trooper sheltering within the sole surviving corner of the barracks as the squad slowly closed in around it. Shepard watched as, without warning, a low electric shimmer appeared behind it and Tali's alloy cannon roared. Vahlenite shards sheared through the geth's shields like they weren't even there and carried on into the platform, where they shredded its torso into small, loose strips of synthetic muscle and shattered armor. White fluid and hot shards of metal flew out its back in a geyser while the geth collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Done," the quarian chirped brightly. She hefted her shotgun up onto her shoulder and waved idly in Shepard's general direction. "Let's get o-"

Her voice cut off abruptly as a deafening roar filled the air, echoing down from overhead. Less than a second later, the rounded nose of a geth frigate burst out of the clouds like an avenging angel, wreathed in steam and the final, flickering remains of re-entry burn. The chaotically whipping trails of white and orange traced the contours of the wasplike craft, following the nose back until it squeezed to a thin point that fit seamlessly within the looming aft section. There, they were scattered by the blunt edge of the teardrop-shaped aft, only to be swept along by the force of its passing into even greater streams that weaved gracefully through the three spindly legs on its belly. It was a beautiful, infuriating and frightening sight.

"Incoming! Get to cover!" Shepard shouted into the comm, internally cursing Pressly and Joker. They'd keep the geth busy, they said. There wouldn't be any air support, they said. Why had he believed that? "Bane! Shoot it down!"

Before he'd even finished speaking, seemingly every missile ever made came flying out of the ruins of the geth camp in a chaotic storm of contrails. Missiles dove, twirled, and maneuvered around each other in an incomprehensible dance of explosive death.

Shepard blinked, and when his eyes reopened, massive firestorms churned in mid-air. The frigate's point defenses filled the air with a piercing zap as one-by-one, in a process so quick Shepard couldn't even detect the time between, the missiles were blown from the sky. Not even synthetic reactions could catch them all however, and well over a dozen ultimately slammed into the ship in a massive explosion of destructive force. Fire and smoke hung in a nebulous cloud around the craft, obscuring the ship from view completely.

A beat later, three car-sized projectiles came flying out of the cloud at staggering speeds. They crossed the few hundred meters to the camp in less than a second and hit with a resounding thud. Shepard distantly noted how all three had landed in a perfect circle around the camp, and he got a very bad feeling about what was about to happen.

Shepard had instinctively tracked the objects' flight, but the low thrumming of engines pulled his attention back up. The geth ship had survived the missile salvo with apparently little more than cosmetic damage. One of its legs had been shorn and the underbelly was cracked and scarred, but there was no instability to its flight. No waver as it hung in the sky like the galaxy's most annoying fly.

Then it turned to point right at him, and Shepard was forced to shift it from 'annoying' to 'terrifying'. Staring down the barrel of a ship's spinal cannon was not something he had _ever_ wanted to do. Completely on instinct, he lashed out.

A wave of psionic power shot from the commander and slammed into the geth ship just as it fired. Shepard could feel the wind of the round's passing as it flew by overhead, and the ground shaking as it hit somewhere behind him. The frigate steadied itself from his blow and began to swing back toward him when he struck again, taking advantage of its movements and forcing it to over-correct.

It spun with the blow and rolled slightly, bringing its top around toward Shepard. He only had a heartbeat to react before GARDIAN fire rained down on him in unrelenting waves, boiling away the dirt around his feet and sending his vahlenite armor running off his form like water. His hud flashed with temperature warnings, flickered and died, all in a fraction of a second, as he felt the first touches of searing heat.

And it sent him into a frenzy.

A tsunami of psionic power rocketed toward the ship, picked it up and sent it tumbling wildly through the air. Shepard glared balefully at the thing as it flopped through the air, unable to feel the agony radiating from huge swathes of his skin through the naked force of his rage. Without moving from his knees, he threw all of his hate, all of his rage at the careening ship. It slammed to a quivering halt so fast, sheer momentum tore its surviving legs off with an echoing chitter. Its engines strained futilely against the giant purple fist that held it still.

"My turn," Shepard whispered furiously. His eyes flashed with deadly intent and implacable will, backlit by the dazzling purple light of fathomless power. Without warning, his psionic grip stopped fighting the ship's engines, allowing it to jump upward in a desperate bid for freedom. He grinned maniacally and loosed the cackle building in his chest as a rapid lateral twist on the frigate shifted its vector from up to down. The full force of the frigate's engines, combined with Shepard's own considerable might, sent the thing shooting for the ground as if fired from an _Annihilator_.

It struck the earth nose first and crumbled like a beer can. Plumes of dirt and enormous shards of metal flew from the point of impact as neither ground nor ship could handle the raw energy of the crash. To Shepard's eyes, the whole tableau stood frozen for an eternal second at the very instant of his victory. All things eventually come to an end, however, and that moment ended in a spectacular explosion. Tongues of flame and pieces of the ship shot dozens of meters into the air as an enormous shockwave traveled through the ground, claiming the attention of everyone in the area.

Without a target, the anger swiftly bled out of Shepard, taking with it all the adrenaline keeping him going through the pain and dizziness. He weakly swung his head over toward the camp and could barely make a handful of small dots, the squad he assumed, standing frozen among the broken remains of three geth armatures. His vision blurred as he fought to stay conscious, and he struggled to activate his half-melted comm.

Miraculously, it actually turned on. The connection was weak and full of static, but with a colossal effort of will, he forced himself to speak loudly enough to be understood. "Si- sitrep," he slurred tiredly.

"Holy shit..." Ashley muttered in response, her voice unsteady and disbelieving. "Did you just- Was that- What?"

"We detect no more heretic platforms in this area," Legion said, ignoring the gunnery chief's sputtering.

"Good," he mumbled back. A thought forced its way through the haze settling over his mind then, and he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Legion, h-how many geth in a s-ship?"

"Maximum capacity for a geth dropship is 4,194,304 programs," the geth answered immediately.

"Heh," Shepard tried to chuckle, only to trail off with a yelp of pain as it aggravated his burns. His vision swam wildly in and out of focus. "Hey Garrus?"

"Yea?"

"I win." And the world went black.

* * *

Shepard awoke to a vaguely familiar ceiling. For several long seconds he simply lay on the slightly-uncomfortable bed, still mostly caught in the grip of sleep. The slight weight of a thin blanket settled over his waist in a reassuring embrace. He wasn't sure where he was, or what he was doing there, but, on some level, he recognized it. It wasn't anything to worry about. His eyes drifted closed once more as he surrendered to the siren song of sleep.

Only to fly back open as his last memories came back in a flash. The haze of sleep boiled away in the sudden surge of adrenaline and he sat up in a rush. Tight skin and stiff muscles screamed their protest of the motion and he couldn't suppress a soft groan at the dull pain. He fought through the sensation and forced himself to look around. He needed to know where he was.

To his right, a dull metal wall. Past the foot of his bed was an opaque window set in an otherwise unremarkable wall. And to his left, a thin membrane he'd seen once before stood behind a small collection of delicate medical machinery. He blinked, half in surprise and half out of self-reprimand as he realized where he was. Of course he'd wind up in the _Normandy_'s medbay after he'd been injured. He should have realized that immediately.

With his safety assured, he relaxed and let himself collapse back onto the bed with a quiet moan of relief. He felt like a walking bruise. A feeling that was only exacerbated when a cursory self-examination revealed the enormous patch of medigel and bandages wrapped around large portions of his chest and both forearms.

"Welcome back, Commander," a friendly voice broke into his inspection. He glanced up, forcing himself not to wince at his muscles' protests, to see Dr. Chakwas stepping around the corner of the privacy screen. She gave him a mock-stern look and said, with relief clear in her voice, "You do know how to keep me busy. How are you feeling?"

"Like I've got the galaxy's worst sunburn. What's the damage?"

"Fairly minor, all things considered," the doctor answered softly. "Your display of psionics stressed your brain severely, but it was not enough to cause any lasting harm. A few more hours' rest and you will recover fully." She frowned severely at him and pinned him with a glare. "However. If it weren't for the new amplifier, you would have almost certainly joined poor Lieutenant Alenko. As it is, you managed to almost burn out an expensive new piece of equipment and knock yourself unconscious. As your doctor, I implore you to find alternative means to destroy enemy frigates."

Shepard winced internally. The reminder of what happened to Kaidan was poignant. Then again, looking back, it wasn't like he had a lot of options. He scowled at nothing, but nodded at the doctor. He didn't want to end up a vegetable, so he could at least try for alternatives. She took it as agreement and continued her diagnosis.

"You've also suffered deep first- and light second-degree burns over most of your chest and arms. Thankfully, medigel patches are an effective treatment for burns, and you should be back in fighting form within a few hours." She frowned pointedly at him. "You will not be fully healed for several days however. I would normally order you to stay in that bed for at least the next two days, but the situation does not allow such luxuries, I'm afraid. Instead, I must insist that you at least _try_ to keep yourself to light duty."

"I'll try," he replied as he poked at the bandage on his chest with a grimace. And he would, but he wasn't about to let his injuries stop him from helping his squad. "But I can't make any promises."

Chakwas buried her face in her palm and sighed heavily. She muttered something disparaging under her breath then looked back to the commander. "At least you didn't lie to me."

He smiled wanly at her and shrugged awkwardly. He had no idea how to respond to that. When casting about for ideas though, he realized something he needed to ask. "How's the squad doing?"

"No major injuries," Dr. Chakwas said with evident relief. "A few bumps and scrapes, but nothing that required my immediate attention."

"Good. Do you know what happened to my gear?"

"Most of it was destroyed beyond repair," EDI's voice intruded into the conversation. "I have taken the liberty of recycling it and am resizing one of the _Normandy_'s standby suits for a replacement."

Shepard nodded distractedly. He could live with a new suit. It would be annoying having to break it in again, but he could deal with it. "What about my guns?"

"Your rifle suffered only cosmetic damage. It was mostly protected from the blast by you and your armor. Your pistol, however, did not survive."

"Damnit," Shepard cursed under his breath. "I _liked_ my pistol." He'd put a lot of work into that gun, poured his heart and soul into it. It was one of the first projects he'd ever finished as an XCOM combat engineer. Losing it felt like losing a hand.

Speaking of hands, Shepard thought with a start as he noticed his had unconsciously curled into tight fists in the blanket. He blinked in surprise as he recognized the insistent thrum of anger causing it. An exertion of will forced his hands to unclench and with a deep breath, he forced himself to fight down the rage. The doctor wasn't responsible for it, and didn't deserve to be subjected to it. He'd just have to save it for the ones who were.

But first he had to get there. He glanced at Dr. Chakwas and cocked an eyebrow. "Am I clear to leave, doc?" She pursed her lips unhappily and disappeared back behind the privacy curtain. "Uhh, Dr. Chakwas?"

She reappeared a moment later, carrying a pile of thin, semi-solid pads that looked to be made out of mostly-transparent wax. She walked over to beside his bed and set the pile on a small portable table beside it. "You can leave, but only if you wear these over your burns."

"What are they?"

"Isolation cells," she explained dryly. "It's an organosilicon compound that we learned of from our quarian friends. It adheres to skin and blocks foreign contaminants from infecting wounds. It's one of the best bandages I've ever seen for use on burns. Now, left arm please."

Shepard shrugged and held out his arm. These things were thin enough that they weren't likely to get in the way, and should be wearable underneath a set of Titan Armor, and if they did as she claimed, he would gladly wear it. Getting infected burns was an experience he could live without.

The doctor busied herself replacing the sterile bandaging and medigel patches before sealing him up under a solid layer of the pads. It was a quick, if tedious, process and after only a few minutes, she stepped back and pronounced herself done.

Shepard swung his legs off the bed and stood up nearly the instant she did so. Sore muscles and tender flesh sang their discontent to him, and he relished it. It was a good pain. The kind that told him he was still alive.

Dr. Chakwas backed out of the small space and he took advantage of the room to stretch a bit, find out how hampered his mobility was. It turned out to be less than he feared, he realized with a smile. He could feel the pads, but they didn't restrict his movements to any large degree. He was more limited by the tenderness of his burns than the treatments of them. He glanced over to the doctor and exchanged a smile with her. "You do good work, doc."

"You give me plenty of opportunity for practice. Do try to avoid a repeat visit though. It isn't something I relish."

"I'll try," he said easily. "EDI, that suit ready for me?"

"I am performing the 'finishing touches' as we speak, Commander. It will be ready by the time you arrive."

"I'm on my way then."

* * *

"Good to see you awake, Commander," Nihlus said as Shepard stepped through the door of the medbay.

"Thanks," the commander returned the greeting with a nod. He didn't have time to stop and chat however, so he waved a hand at Nihlus and continued. "Walk with me. I need to get to the armory and you need to fill me in on what happened while I was out. Speaking of, how long has it been?"

The turian shoved off the wall he'd been leaning against and fell in beside Shepard. An orange flare caught the commander's eye as he checked the time on his omnitool. "Almost six hours. After you collapsed, we attempted to return you to the _Normandy_ for treatment before attacking the secondary target."

"Attempted?" Shepard asked with a frown. That didn't sound good.

"Yes," EDI answered for the Spectre. "Nazara's pursuit of us was dogged. We could not stop long enough to establish a portal or we likely would have been destroyed."

"And activating the Wraith system would have sent the Reaper right over our heads," Shepard concluded for her. He distractedly palmed the elevator's control as he entered the car alongside Nihlus. "Makes sense. What happened then?"

"Gunnery Chief Williams announced that you were hurt but stable," Nihlus answered him calmly. "So we placed you in Bane and continued the mission."

Without warning or conscious thought, Shepard was suddenly livid, incandescent with rage. He wasn't one that ever enjoyed sitting out the fight, especially not when the lives of his people were on the line, and the fact that he was both injured and unconscious was a poor salve to how much it galled him to have been completely useless. His hands worked unconsciously and he trained a thunderous scowl out into the middle distance. He very carefully reminded himself that punching the wall of the elevator, while likely to feel fantastic for a brief instant, would not turn back time and would only serve to exacerbate his injuries for no worthwhile reason. Possibly to the point where he'd have to sit out the _rest_ of the mission.

That realization snuffed out his anger like a campfire in a hurricane. He took a deep, steadying breath and carefully mumbled his thanks.

Nihlus met his gaze and nodded understandingly. Instead of the condescending platitudes Shepard was half-expecting, the turian forged ahead with his recap of events. Huh, Shepard mused. Maybe he really did understand. "The secondary target was a much smaller base, little more than a patrol base. They had a number of airborne drones, but few dedicated combat platforms and none of those krogan monstrosities."

"Ogres," Shepard interrupted. The turian gave him a curious look, so he explained, "I call them 'ogres' after human myths about enormous, hideous humanoids that eat people and tend to wear their skin."

"'Ogre',"Nihlus said slowly, as if tasting the word. He clucked quietly and nodded his approval. "It fits." The doors of the elevator slid open a beat later and the duo stepped out onto the cargo deck. With the ease of long practice, Shepard's feet led him straight toward the armory. "The base was only lightly defended in any case. I presume the bulk of their forces were dispatched in the frigate you destroyed."

The commander hummed his agreement but didn't speak, so Nihlus continued without missing a beat. "Once our objectives were completed, the _Normandy_ was able to ditch Sovereign long enough to activate the stealth system and retrieve us. We landed at the STG rendezvous slightly more than an hour ago and I have Legion and Garrus keeping watch for their approach."

"Good," Shepard said with an approving nod. He activated the door as it slid open and stepped inside. A set of Titan Armor had been laid out on the workbench to one side of the room, where a handful of robotic arms were busy attaching the last two armored plates into its chest..

"I am just finishing the installation of the mass effect module," EDI said. "Please stand beside the table. We will need to calibrate the armor's systems once I am done."

"Yea, yea, I remember," The commander said with a roll of his eyes but moved to the indicated spot. Sitting through the calibrations was always the most aggravating part of a new set of armor. He looked over to Nihlus. "You can take off, if you like," he offered. "This is going to be pretty dull."

The turian shrugged and wandered off as EDI began the long process of getting him into the suit then attuning it to the eccentricities of his body. Several eternities passed as Shepard performed such exciting and challenging feats as lifting his arm and taking a single step, over and over again. How Garrus could actually enjoy this kind of thing utterly baffled him.

Eventually though, the fitting was complete. Shepard blew out an enormous sigh of relief at EDI's announcement. "Thank god that's over."

He ran through a short list of more excessive movements, forcing down his discomfort as his injuries were pulled on, and was surprised to note that this set of armor moved even smoother than his old one. The calibrations here were so close to perfect he couldn't tell the difference, and he didn't even have to tweak it himself. AIs were definitely the way to go for proper calibrations.

"Wow, you're good at this EDI."

"Thank you, Commander. Do you require anything else?"

"Do we have any spare parts for a plasma pistol? I'd like to put together a replacement for my old one."

"Provide me with a list of required parts and I will procure them for you."

Shepard nodded and made a mental note to compile that list once he got back to the blueprints in his quarters. He opened his mouth to say his goodbyes when his suit's comm came to life.

"Incoming," Garrus whispered, his voice tense. "Salarians. Nineteen, maybe twenty. I think our hosts have arrived."

"Perfect timing," Shepard called back, earning surprised exclamations from nearly the whole squad. "I'll be out shortly. Keep a gun or two on them too. They may be under Nazara's control."

When Garrus answered, his voice made it clear he hadn't thought of that, and he didn't like it. "Got it. Legion and I will stay on overwatch."

Shepard nodded to himself. Hopefully now it was time to get some answers.

* * *

"That's far enough!" Shepard called out to the incoming salarians as they came into speaking distance. The squad, hiding in a loose semi-circle around the entrance of the canyon the salarians were coming out of, tensed at his words, but no one revealed themselves. With an approving grin, he stepped smoothly out from behind the rock he'd sheltered behind with his new rifle held loosely and pointed at the ground. Directly across the circle from him, Nihlus did the same.

The salarians slammed to a halt and, in the time it took Shepard to blink, scrambled into a defensive formation. Before he could even consciously register their movement, the commander was staring down half a dozen gun barrels. He met the naked threat with forced ease, refusing to let himself be intimidated by a bunch of intelligent frogs. A low murmur of surprise spread through the group as they got a good look at him, followed by a rapid series of poorly hidden incredulous stares. One by one, their guns disappeared back into their holsters. Heh. They definitely hadn't been expecting to find XCOM here.

One of the salarians stepped ahead of his fellows and eyed Shepard warily. "You are the ones who contacted us?"

"Depends," Shepard answered calmly, with just the slightest hint of deadly promise. "What's your name?"

"Captain Kirrahe, Third Infiltration Regiment STG," the salarian said rapidly. His gaze bounced from Shepard to Nihlus, and the commander thought he could see a veiled layer of confusion behind the salarian's eyes. "Who are you? And what is XCOM doing here?"

Shepard nodded. That checked out from the briefing. This really was the guy. He relaxed minutely and holstered his rifle, even as he signalled for the rest of the squad to stand down, before pointing at himself. "Lieutenant-Commander John Shepard, XCS _Normandy_. Over there is Nihlus Kryik, Council Spectre."

The murmurs from the salarians redoubled at that. Shepard could hear his title thrown about, pulling a scowl out behind his mask. Even Kirrahe seemed taken aback as he blinked in surprise and turned a wary eye on the commander. Nihlus' voice stepped into the uneasy quiet and picked up the explanation. "The Council received a garbled signal on the emergency channel reserved for your mission. They requested we investigate while a task force is assembled."

"Good," Kirrahe said enthusiastically. He glanced up at the sky, as if expecting to see Council warships settling in overhead. "We will need them. How soon until the reinforcements arrive?"

"Not for a week at minimum. The task force had only just begun assembling yesterday."

The salarian blinked and cursed sulphurously. Large eyes, hardened by grim certainty, bored into Nihlus as Kirrahe said, "That will be far too late."

"What?" Shepard asked in surprise. What was this guy talking about? "Too late for what?" He shook his head. "No, better question. What the hell's going on around here?"

"Saren is building an army. An army of nearly unkillable monstrosities he intends to unleash on the galaxy." Kirrahe's gaze moved to the commander and pinned him with a steady gaze. "And he's nearly finished."

Shepard winced internally. There was only one thing on this rock that Shepard could think of that qualified as 'nearly unkillable monstrosity'. Three ogres were bad enough. An army was terrifying. "We've seen them," he said aloud, ruthlessly suppressing the tremor of fear that tried to worm its way into his voice. "There were three at the first geth camp we hit. What the hell are they?"

The STG captain blinked in surprise and leveled an inscrutable, piercing gaze on Shepard. "You live up to your reputation, Carnifex," he said after a long few seconds of scrutiny. The commander scowled behind his helmet, but didn't let his body language convey his annoyance. Kirrahe seemed to take his silence as acceptance though, for he moved on immediately. "As for your question, we aren't entirely sure, and I've lost half my men trying to find out. What we do know is that Saren has established a base of operations approximately 200 kilometers from this location. It's heavily fortified and crawling with geth. There, he is breeding an army of krogan and turning them into those creatures."

At that, Wrex heaved himself out of cover and forcibly inserted himself into the conversation. "How is he getting the numbers?" he demanded heatedly. "The genophage should make building an army impossible, even with clones."

Kirrahe's voice was cool and emotionless as he said, "He has apparently discovered a cure."

Nihlus turned to Shepard and said, his voice incredulous, "By the spirits, it's true. Your presence alone is enough to make a mission go horribly wrong."

"It sure as hell feels that way sometimes," he answered with a fierce scowl. Of course there wouldn't be a limit to the number of ogres running around. Without them, he'd only have to contend with a superdreadnought of unfathomable power and an army of geth. That would just be too easy.

He shook his head, banishing the half-panicked cycle of sarcasm to the rear corners of his mind and fixed his gaze on Kirrahe. "An ogre horde would overrun the galaxy in weeks. We need to stop this."

"It gets even worse I'm afraid," Kirrahe said sharply. Shepard sighed internally. He should have guessed. "My men and I have been observing the facility for some time now, and we believe that Saren is preparing for his next move. Supply and troop movements indicate that it is very likely he is planning to move all of his forces off world within the next three days. I believe he intends to initiate the next step of his plan. Most likely an armed assault on his next objective, presumably the Citadel. This facility and _all_ of its secrets need to be destroyed before that can happen."

"Destroyed?" Wrex cut in abruptly. "I don't think so. My people are dying. That place holds the key to their survival. You want to stop Saren from keeping it, I'm with you. Hell, I'm going to beat him to death with his own arm. But we're not destroying this place until I find that cure."

"A krogan horde isn't much better than a horde of... ogres?," Kirrahe shot back, with a questioning glance at Shepard. When the commander nodded, he shrugged and turned back to Wrex. "Especially since we have no idea how much of the modifications are required for the cure to be successful." He looked to Shepard. "If that cure gets off this planet, the whole galaxy will burn, and that includes the Coalition. It must be destroyed, and it must be destroyed _now_."

Wrex stomped up to the salarian and glowered balefully at him, while his hands worked into tight fists at his side. "We are talking about the survival of my entire species."

"So am I," Kirrahe answered with a steady glare of his own. Shepard felt his respect for the captain ratchet up a few notches at that display. Not many could stare down Wrex like that, not when he was this worked up. "We are not going to make the same mistake twice."

The krogan growled, low in his throat. "We are not a _mistake_."

"No, of course not," Kirrahe shot back, for the first time showing signs of frustrated anger. "You only slaughtered billions."

Faster than Shepard could follow, Wrex's head reared back and shot forward with crushing force. A soft crunch rang through the air as hard, bony plate met soft, amphibious skin and the salarian crumpled bonelessly to the earth. His men immediately jumped to his aid, and all but the two helping him back to his feet had their weapons back out and trained on the krogan. Wrex's chest worked like a bellows as he glared angrily at the obviously woozy salarian. He took one step toward them, only to freeze as streamers of bright purple light grabbed him and threw him away.

"Enough!" Shepard bellowed at the top of his lungs with an angry glare. The stupid, crazy-ass muton was going to let Saren and Nazara get away if he kept up this shit. Shepard watched impassively as a metric ton of furious lizard tumbled through the air with all the grace of a thrown brick. He hit the ground on his back several meters away with an earthshaking thump and was on his feet in a flash. Shepard met his glare and advanced on the krogan with a scowl. "Stand down Wrex."

"Stay out of this, Carnifex," Wrex spat angrily. His glare burned holes in Shepard's forehead. "This doesn't concern you."

"The fuck it doesn't," Shepard shot back, his frustration leaking into his voice. "I don't give two shits about the genophage, but this tantrum of yours is going to get in the way of stopping the sectoid-fucking Reapers. I'm making it my concern."

"Tantrum?" Wrex echoed incredulously. Righteous indignation suffused his voice as he thundered, "This cure may be the last hope for the survival of my entire Void-be-damned species! And you want to destroy it!"

"Anyone remember that it turns krogan into monsters?" Ashley asked loudly and pointedly.

"Stay out of this!" Shepard and Wrex snapped at her as one. The commander glanced around briefly and continued alone. "All of you!" He turned back to Wrex. "She has a point. This 'cure' turns your people into mindless animals."

"Which is why I'm going to take the part that cures the genophage and burn the rest." He growled at Shepard, a low, angry sound that the commander could feel in his bones. "My people are dying, and now I'm doing something about it. Just like you said. Get out of my way or I'm going through you."

Shepard had to suppress a groan at that. Of course his words were being thrown back in his face. It couldn't possibly happen any other way. He closed the remaining few feet between them and deliberately planted himself firmly before the krogan. "I can't let you do that."

A low rumble, akin to the grinding of stones, rang through the still air of the canyon as Wrex seethed. Big, three-fingered hands curled into fists so tightly they were shaking with barely restrained violence. Shepard ignored it and met the krogan's furious gaze with an implacable stare, refusing to move away from that symbolic spot. He wouldn't, couldn't let Wrex have his way here.

Without warning, Shepard's burned chest erupted in a flare of blinding pain as one of Wrex's huge fists slammed into the side of his ribs. The blow lifted him up onto the balls of his feet and sent him staggering. Behind him, he could hear the rest of the squad pulling out their weapons.

Nihlus started saying something, but Shepard couldn't hear it over the sudden pounding of his heart in his ears. His whole attention was focused solely on Wrex. The fucking muton had hit him. Raw, primal fury burned in his chest, brilliantly hot and utterly all-consuming. He didn't even notice the rifle falling from his hands as he threw himself at the krogan with a wordless shout of anger.

Thoughts of strategy, tactics, and all of his training in close quarters combat vanished under the seething tide of rage. He didn't care anymore. All that mattered was pounding the colossal fucking idiot back into the thinnest paste he could manage. He threw everything he had into a single blow that smashed into Wrex's cheek like it was fired from a cannon.

The krogan took the blow and spun with its momentum. He stumbled back a single step, set himself, and immediately came right back swinging. The retaliatory strike hit Shepard in the chest, but his hackles were up now. With so much adrenaline pumping through him, he only distantly noticed the shock of pain. His other hand lanced out in a jab straight into Wrex's nose, knocking the krogan back with a grunt of surprise.

Wrex staggered back and growled dangerously. "How can you not see what this means?!" he bellowed, throwing another punch.

Shepard blew out a noisy breath as Wrex landed another heavy blow to his side and threw his elbow up into his opponent's chin. "How can _you_ be this fucking stupid?!"

Stars exploded through the red haze of Shepard's vision as the krogan caught him with a vicious uppercut. "It's the only chance to save my people!"

"You," Shepard began, slamming a punch into the krogan equivalent of the floating rib. "Fucking." He caught Wrex's next blow on his left shoulder and felt something give. Even through the thick layer of anger, he was starting to feel the pain and exhaustion settling in. He scowled fiercely and threw himself into a tackle that carried them both to the ground. "Moron!"

Weak, ineffectual blows rained on Shepard's chest, but now that Wrex was on his back, the krogan just couldn't get the proper leverage for his normal, devastating power. Some deep, primal part of the commander knew he needed to end this soon, or he simply wouldn't be able to. And that couldn't be allowed to happen. His left arm flopped bonelessly around, painfully blocking Wrex's hands as best it could, while his right worked like a piston. Blow after blow slammed into Wrex's head as the krogan struggled futilely to rise.

Words came tumbling out of Shepard's throat in a torrent, each sentence punctuated by the solid whack of armored fist meeting the lizard's helmet. "It won't save anything! It will turn them into ogres! That what you want?! The krogan as mindless slaves! Weapons!"

Finally, the krogan got a grip on Shepard's armor, kicked down with his powerful legs and rolled, throwing the commander away from him. Shepard hit the ground painfully, not even the adrenaline soaring through his blood able to fully suppress the agony his body was reporting. At this point, the line between old and new wounds was utterly gone. Everything hurt equally. He refused to let it show though. Backing down from this fight would be worse than losing.

He pushed through the pain and forced himself, slowly and painfully to his feet, glaring daggers at Wrex all the while. The krogan echoed his movement, but wavered unsteadily on his feet, clearly showing the toll the commander had exacted from him. Shepard supposed he should have been happy at that, but all he could really feel was tired, and disgusted. This never should have happened. Words came unbidden from his mouth, a vitriolic stream full of his frustrated anger at the stubborn psychotic lizard. "You're willing to let the galaxy burn, just to turn your people into monsters?!"

Wrex glared at him for a few seconds, but then surprised him with a low chuckle. "I've said it before, Carnifex. You would have made a good krogan." He shook his head and blew out a heavy breath. He let his arms fall to his side and rose out of his defensive crouch. "You've made your point. I don't like it, but I like those _things_ even less. And you've earned the trust. I'll help you blow this place to the void and back."

Shepard just stared incredulously at him for several seconds before burying his face in his hands. "I will never understand krogan," he muttered loudly, earning another chuckle from Wrex.

"You do a good job of faking it then," the krogan countered dryly. He paused and his gaze sharpened. "And Carnifex? One more thing."

"What?"

"When we find Saren, I want his head."

Shepard nodded with a weary sigh and turned around to find a thoroughly perturbed squad of salarians fingering their weapons and glancing uncertainly between he and the resident Spectre. One of Nihlus' arms disappeared behind Kirrahe's back, along with the salarian's right arm, while the other slowly twirled what Shepard immediately recognized as the captain's gun. The commander raised an eyebrow and turned a deliberate look on Nihlus. The turian shrugged dismissively. "He tried to interfere."

"Ah. Thanks, I think," Shepard said uncertainly. With a nod, Nihlus released the captain and presented him with the hilt of his gun. Kirrahe took it warily and gave him a dirty look. "Sorry about that," the commander said with forced cheer, trying to downplay what had just happened. He forced through his body's protests and refused to let it show as he painfully made his way back toward the salarian team. "Had to settle a disagreement. You were saying?"

"Disagreement?" Kirrahe asked incredulously. He glanced from Shepard to Wrex, who had slouched against the nearest wall and resolutely ignored the rest of the goings on. Under his breath, so quietly Shepard also couldn't make it out, he muttered, "Note to self, don't argue with him."

Shepard's lips quirked at the words, but didn't give voice to his amusement. As the insistent pulsing of his wounds could attest, it was time to get down to business. "Don't worry about it," he said with a shake of his head. "We're all in agreement now that this place needs to be destroyed. Ideally, that will include every single ogre Saren has made. Do you have any ideas how?"

"Why not use the _Normandy_?" Nihlus asked before Kirrahe could respond. "It could destroy a single building easily."

"The normandy?" the salarian asked carefully, testing out the unfamiliar word.

Shepard glanced up at the massive overhangs above that utterly blocked any view of the sky and grinned internally. There was no way for the geth to spot them from orbit, so it was time to show off a little. He temporarily deactivated his external speakers, opened a comm channel to the ship and said, "EDI, drop the cloak."

"Right away, Shepard," she answered immediately. A static crackle filled the air as white shimmers danced in chaotic patterns along the canyon walls. He didn't even have to look to picture the way the craft seemed to melt into existence from absolutely nothing.

"Our ship," he announced simply, thoroughly enjoying the looks of utter, mind-numbing shock rippling through the crowd of salarians. "It should be able to get close and destroy the facility before they can react."

Kirrahe's mouth worked soundlessly for several seconds before he finally managed to stammer out, "Per-perhaps. The facility is heavily fortified however, and has multiple cruisers as guards at all times. What are the limits on that cl-cloaking technology?"

Spooks, Shepard thought sarcastically with a roll of his eyes. "You don't really expect me to answer that honestly, do you?"

Kirrahe made a strangled sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh. "Not really, no. But if your ship is not capable of maintaining its stealth properties during the attack, the defenses in place _will_ destroy it. Not to mention that we have no way of knowing how far underground the facility extends. If it is deep enough, a bombardment would not be of any use."

The commander scowled, but had to admit the salarian had a point. The _Normandy_ was a great ship and could punch well above her weight class, but she couldn't take on half a dozen geth ships and a goddamn Reaper at the same time and expect to survive. "Let's call that Plan B, then," he said, deliberately ignoring the way the salarian's eyes lit up with interest at the half-admission. If he didn't, he was liable to punch the spy. "Do we have any alternatives?"

"I have one idea," Kirrahe ventured cautiously. "We could rig the drive system of our ship to act as a high yield nuclear weapon. With human wormhole technology, it should be a trivial matter to transport the bomb into the facility and retreat before it detonates."

"Perhaps not as trivial as you imagine," Nihlus said. "Wormholes have strict requirements for their use, including the ability to visualize the destination. We do not have images or recordings of the facility's interior. We cannot deliver the bomb without that."

"And besides, that only takes out the production plant. It doesn't do anything about the ogres that already exist," Shepard picked up the explanation. His mind raced through possibilities and plans as he continued. "The core idea is sound, but we'll need to change our approach. The only question is how."

"I have a plan for that," Kirrahe offered, his voice almost hesitant. "I was hoping it would not come to this, but Saren needs to be stopped." He took a deep, fortifying breath before continuing. "I'll divide my men into three teams and attack the front of the facility. We'll draw their attention and lure all the defenders into range while you and your people sneak in the back and plant the bomb."

"You sure about that?" Shepard asked with a raised brow. "That sounds an awful lot like a suicide mission."

"We're tougher than we look, and with wormholes to retreat through, I hope it won't be." He grimaced slightly and looked uncertain. "But if I understand correctly, that will require bringing at least one of your people with us."

"It would," Shepard admitted with a nod. "Fortunately, we have just the thing." He turned and barked out, "Urdnot, get over here." The krogan shoved off the wall he was leaning against and lumbered over to stand beside the commander. "You're the best we've got for heavy assault. That means you're going with the STG. Take Rex and Bane with you and kill as many of the sectoid-fucking things as you can."

Wrex chuckled at the look on Kirrahe's face. "Relax, salarian. You're not my enemy."

"Forgive me if I don't find that encouraging after your earlier display," Kirrahe shot back heatedly.

"Relax," Shepard said firmly as he put himself between them. "Wrex is many things, but a liar isn't one of them. His word is good."

The salarian's gaze bounced uncertainly between Shepard and the looming form behind him, then darted over to lock on Nihlus. The turian nodded firmly and Kirrahe blew out a heavy, resigned breath. "Very well. When shall we begin the attack?"

"The hour before dawn is usually the best bet against diurnal organics," Nihlus offered. "But I doubt the geth are subject to such limitations."

"Probably not," Shepard agreed. "Legion, you got any suggestions?"

"Geth do not tire," Legion replied immediately. "Nor can they be distracted. All portions of the day are identical to the Geth. We recommend late morning, when conditions are optimum for organic operations."

Shepard looked around the gathering. "Any objections to late morning tomorrow then?"

"None," Kirrahe affirmed, and Nihlus nodded along.

"Then we've got a plan." A small, grim smile crossed the commander's face unbidden as a new idea occurred to him, one that would make their job much easier. "EDI, get a fake portal up in orbit, make it look like we've left the system. Let them rest easy one last time."

He couldn't wait until tomorrow. Saren wouldn't know what hit him.

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Ogre  
June 2183  
**_At over three meters tall and approximately 1500 kilograms, this creature is the first example of true heavy infantry we have encountered since the end of the Ethereal War. It began life as a krogan, but underwent a process quite similar to that which creates human husks. This process induced a variety of changes that are each clearly meant to allow it to act as a kind of 'organic tank', much like Mutons. _

_The first, and most disturbing, of these changes is the neurological shift. Its pain receptors have been removed, as has nearly its entire brain. All that remains is its equivalent of the limbic system. This change renders it physically incapable of faltering under fire or hesitating in any way. It is unclear how they are controlled out of combat, but when delivered to the battlefield, they become unstoppable berserkers._

_The second change is the overt physical transformation. This creature is approximately fifty percent larger than any previously recorded krogan, with a 70% increase in muscle mass. In addition, the natural armor plating of the original krogan was sublimated into an organo-metallic compound we have never before encountered. This compound is easily comparable with Citadel armor for ballistic protection and, of far greater urgency, is one of the most effective thermal protections in the known galaxy. Plasma and laser fire, with its heavy reliance on thermal energy, is nearly useless against this creature._

_In addition, this compound retains many key properties of its original organic form, including the ability to quickly regenerate damage when supplied with biological compounds. With further study, we believe we can decipher the unique properties of this compound and integrate it into vahlenite armor._


	23. Assault

**Chapter 22: Assault**

"Shadow team, in position," the Carnifex's voice came over the radio. "We're ready when you are."

"We attack in thirty seconds," Kirrahe's answer came in the same beat. "Get to your positions."

Urdnot Wrex grunted his acknowledgement and shoved himself to his feet. A smooth motion that spoke of long practice swept his heavy plasma up in one hand, even as the other grabbed the newest addition to his arsenal and attached it to the maglock on his back. The alloy cannon latched tightly to his armor, well out of the way of his normal range of motion. He scowled at the necessity, but the stupid thing was all they had to deal with ogres. It would have to do until the Carnifex finished that new rifle he was talking about.

He stomped over toward the edge of the canyon they sheltered behind, joining Bane and the robotic varren, Rex he thought it was called, and pointedly ignoring the four salarians with them. He carefully peeked around the corner and surveyed the enormous wall only a few hundred meters away. A small parapet, complete with geth troopers stationed in perfect intervals, decorated the top of the wall and turned the flat, empty plain around it into an effective killbox. A straight infantry charge would never survive past the halfway point.

His lips twitched into a mirthless smile. It was a good thing they weren't doing a straight infantry charge.

"Go in five," Kirrahe murmured over the comm. "_Normandy_ ready?"

"We are prepared," EDI answered.

Kirrahe counted down the last few seconds to commencement, and at zero, barked a command. "Assault team, go!"

The second the words came out, Bane surged forward with a quiet thrum. It slid out into the open, its armored bulk providing limited cover for the lightly armored salarians of the assault team. A steady whine filled the air as the geth defenders came immediately to life. The troopers whirled as one to face the tank and bullets filled in the air in a deadly accurate storm. At the same time, a swarm of small drones lifted out from behind the walls and darted through the air, racing toward the tank and the ones taking cover behind it.

The next instant, Bane responded. Missiles the size of a krogan arm burst from the racks on its back with a deafening hiss. Thick contrails filled the air with blinding smoke as the powerful explosives crossed the distance to the walls in less than a second. When they hit, over fifty meters of the wall exploded. Dozens of enormous fireballs blossomed, throwing shrapnel through the thick, cloying smoke in a deadly storm.

High-pitched squeals and chitters rang through the air as the geth on the walls died in droves. It was impossible to see them through the thick smoke, but the sound of metal and synthetic muscle being shredded was unmistakable. At least six of the full combat platforms had been severely damaged in the opening salvo. The drones, from what he could see through the thinner smoke above, fared slightly better thanks to being further away from the explosions, but the shrapnel that did reach them proved just as deadly. Damaged drones fell to the ground in a hail of broken metal, striking the ground with an earsplitting clatter.

Down lower and at opposite ends of the targeted stretch of wall, two portals tore open at the base, hidden by the smoke and the chaos happening above, and the rest of the STG team charged through. To one side of Bane, the varren spat plasma at the surviving drones, carefully corralling them into tight groupings for the salarian hangers-on. Electricity arced through the air as the salarians cycled overload tech mines into every group the varren formed. Wave after wave, the drones fell en masse, and in seconds, the skies were almost fully cleared by the focused barrage.

At the same time, Wrex swept his heavy plasma in broad arcs back and forth over the top of the rampart, forcing the surviving troopers to stay down or be utterly destroyed. He broke off as grapples flew up from the salarians at the base of the wall and dismissed them from his thoughts. He couldn't do any more good from out here. He needed to get in there with them.

Fortunately, that was the next step of the plan. The instant the last salarian disappeared over the wall, Bane's pulse cannon roared. A massive red beam of devastation slammed into the barricade directly ahead of them. The barrier evaporated under the raw destructive power of the tank's main gun, leaving a gaping hole full of thick, swirling smoke and flame.

Without the slightest hesitation, Wrex threw himself into a biotic charge straight toward the middle of the new gap. In the span of a single blink, he had crossed the entire field and slammed into something hidden by the smoke. The shock of the collision disrupted the obscuring veil just enough for Wrex to find himself face to face with an angry ogre.

The impact didn't even phase the creature. It lashed out with a powerful backhand before Wrex had even fully registered its presence. The blow caught him in the meat of his shoulder with a loud crack, picked him up, and sent him flying through the air for several meters. He ignored the sudden shock of pain and the damage alert on his hud as he hit the ground, rolled once, and slammed both feet into the earth as he came out of his roll. One hand came down to clutch the ground and slow his skid, even as the other stowed his heavy plasma and grabbed the hilt of his alloy cannon.

A furious bellow rang out and the ogre charged out of the smoke straight at him. His free hand flicked out and a biotic push slammed into its chest with the force of a speeding train, which only served to momentarily stagger the thing. That was enough.

The shotgun came off his back and in the same motion, Wrex fired it one-handed into the beast's chest. Thick geysers of orange blood fountained from gaping holes torn in its hide, but it didn't even slow. Rapid, heavy footsteps closed the distance faster than anything its size should be able to move and it lunged at Wrex with another ear-splitting cry.

The krogan stole a move from the Carnifex's book and ducked under the ogre's grasp with a spin. He latched onto one of its arms and called up a mass effect field as he twisted as hard as he could. The bastardized human move, when combined with the ogre's own momentum, pulled it up over Wrex's hump and slammed it face first into the ground. His alloy cannon slipped under its chin and barked once more, tearing its head apart in a shower of orange blood.

The thing went limp and fell over with a crash, but Wrex had no time to celebrate his victory. The slowly thinning smoke parted to reveal a geth destroyer and a pair of ogres rushing straight for the rest of the assault squad that had just come through the hole behind him. Before he could react, the varren spit a sizzling bolt of plasma at the geth that hit with terrific force. Its shields flared and burst, allowing the surviving plasma to splash against its chest. Its armor bubbled and melted and the air filled with loud popping sounds as synthetic muscle burst into flame. In a fraction of a second, a massive, gaping hole had seared itself through the geth's chest and turned its delicate innards into molten slag. The destroyer collapsed with a slow chitter and the salarians rallied briefly at the sight.

Then the ogres were on them. The leading creature lashed out at the nearest salarian with a terrific punch. The hit was so powerful that the salarian's shields flared, only to shatter in the same instant, barely slowing the ogre's fist before it struck the salarian's chest with a sickening crunch. The salarian, including his armor, burst like an overripe fruit, covering the creature's front in thick green blood. As one, the salarians flinched instinctively, and the ogre's partner took advantage of the opening by throwing itself into the middle of the group with an echoing roar.

Suddenly, the varren tackled the leaping ogre in mid-air with a ferocious snarl. They collided heavily in the heart of the salarian formation and began wrestling furiously as the STG contingent scattered. Wrex dismissed the grounded pair temporarily in favor of the still standing creature. The Carnifex would understand. The varren could be repaired.

The still-standing ogre had taken a single step from the ruined salarian when a thousand kilograms of krogan fury, wreathed in dark energy and flung at physics-defying speeds, slammed into it with a biotic charge. It staggered a single step and, in the same motion, kicked out at Wrex, but he was ready for it this time. The krogan nimbly dodged the blow, though despite his best efforts, it still struck far too close for comfort.

His instincts demanded he throw aside his guns and beat this thing, this abomination of all that it meant to be krogan, into a paste with his bare hands, but a will honed over millennia slammed down on that impulse and strangled it before it could truly form. He was a true krogan. The blood rage was his to use, to focus and guide as he willed. Not to let rule him.

He grabbed the ogre's extended leg and shoved the barrel of his shotgun into the back of its knee, where he pulled the trigger. Blood, bone, and flechettes flew out from its kneecap in a wide spray, even as the krogan suddenly found himself holding the bottom half of a leg. Wrex was surprised by the weight of it, but ignored it as he lashed out at the distracted ogre with the makeshift club.

Unable to take a step and balance itself, the ogre fell heavily to the earth half a second before it was riddled with dozens of salarian bullets. The krogan turned away then, confident that the salarians could handle it and turned to assist the varren with the other one. Just as he finished his turn however, the five-hundred kilo robot hit him in the chest and sent him sprawling.

"I'm getting sick of that," he muttered to himself, shoving the heavy thing off of him. The robot tumbled off him with a clatter, revealing the fact that it was now missing a limb. That didn't do much more than slow the thing down however, because it rolled to its feet the instant it was on the ground and rushed back at the ogre as quickly as it could manage in a strange, hopping gait.

Wrex growled and shoved himself up after it, alloy cannon roaring at the ogre with every step. Flechettes streaked over the robot's head and slammed into the creature in a deadly storm. One such flechette pierced straight into its upper thigh and obviously severed something important. Its headlong charge turned into a barely-controlled stumble, just as the varren reached it.

The robot's jaws lashed out and locked onto its victim's face with a ferocious bite. It ignored the ogre's struggles and awkward punches as it worked its head once before brilliant green light shot out from between its teeth. The ogre twitched violently and thick clouds of steam billowed upwards before it went limp. It fell onto its side with a soft thud and as the varren backed away, Wrex could see the gaping, molten hole where the ogre's face had once been.

"Not bad," he said quietly to Rex. "Learn that from the Carnifex?" He got an agreeing yip in return and grunted approvingly. "Thought so." He glanced back at the first ogre to find it a ruined mess of blood and holes and the salarians gingerly spreading out around it. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Bane slowly emerging from the now-thin smoke around the hole they had made in the walls. A quick glance around showed no other enemies in the courtyard, just most of the STG team moving to regroup.

"Looks clear," Kirrahe said over the team's comm. "Assault team, what's your status?"

"One dead," Wrex rumbled in answer. "Light injuries."

"Good enough," the captain said, though the distaste in his voice made it clear he didn't like it. "Head for th-" Kirrahe was cut off by a sudden whistling roar that echoed through the stilling air and Wrex's hearts erupted into a furious tempo. He knew that sound.

Enormous, vaguely-rectangular shapes, dozens of them in a wide range of sizes, fell from the sky at phenomenal speeds, slamming into the ground with earth-shaking force. A gentle-yet-loud whirring sound, echoed by dozens more just like it of lessening intensity, rang out as every single one of the objects unfolded into distinct, familiar forms. He was right. The geth had sent reinforcements.

* * *

A rapid series of deafening booms cracked through the still, morning air and great plumes of smoke billowed in thick, blinding streams in the distance. Shepard cracked a wry smile as a full half of the geth platforms defending the wall he was watching turned and raced off toward the source of the commotion. Wrex and his backup made for one hell of a distraction, he had to give them that. Now it was time to make good on the their part of the op.

"Tali, Legion," he ordered quietly. "You're up."

"On it," the quarian responded, just as quietly. She and her geth partner shimmered briefly and a gentle electric crackle reached Shepard's ears as they vanished from sight. Their markers on his hud darted out from behind the rocks they had hidden behind and raced straight for the wall.

At the same time, Shepard turned his attention to covering them. His rifle swept along the top of the barricade, looking for any sign that the geth had noticed them, as well as opportune targets for the imminent attack. A low breath of relief escaped him when the cloaked pair made it to the wall without earning so much as a second glance. "Three meters to your left," he whispered into the comm. "Nothing's looking that way."

A click came back over the comm in confirmation and the pair began scaling the wall. Hand over hand, the pair used their spider modules to swiftly and, more importantly, silently clamber up the sheer metal surface. Directly under the noses of at least eight geth troopers, the pair slipped over the top of the wall and stood calmly on its battlements.

"Shepard," Tali's whisper was urgent. "There's more of those things here, the ogres. I count four."

Crap. "It was too much to hope that they'd all be at the front door," he murmured back. "It doesn't matter. We'll be ready for them." She made a sound that agreed with him, but clearly conveyed her lack of confidence. Shepard frowned. That wouldn't do. "Stick to kinetics, just like we practiced, and they'll go down easy enough. If I can take out three of them, you sure as hell can take out one."

"We can't crash frigates with our minds," Ashley muttered pointedly, thankfully without broadcasting it over the comm.

Shepard gave her the best glare he could through an opaque visor and responded in kind. "Not. Helping." She flinched slightly and murmured an apology, so he turned his attention back to the wall. "Anything else we need to worry about?"

"Negative," Legion replied. "All support forces have been directed to counter the distraction team."

At least something was going right. "Good. You ready?"

"Affirmative. My communication jamming protocols have intercepted sufficient heretic signals to disrupt them in this area."

"Wait for my signal. Garrus, take the left. I've got the right. Work toward the middle. Everyone else, work middle out. We need the geth dead ASAP. A loose signal means this is all for nothing."

"So no pressure," Garrus snarked.

"None whatsoever," the commander countered with the slightest chuckle. "Well, unless you don't want to lose. Again." The turian sputtered muffled denials and accusations of cheating, but Shepard ignored it. Time was not on their side now. He settled his rifle on his target and counted down from three. At zero, the distant sounds of fierce combat were joined by the deafening roar of an overwhelming barrage of plasma.

Shepard watched as a bolt of brilliant green burst from the barrel of his rifle and, half a heartbeat later, struck his first target with the fury of the sun. Its shield shattered in an instant, and plasma splashed against its armor, boiling away huge swathes of the metal in a fraction of a second. The impact staggered the geth, or maybe the heat triggered something in its muscles, for it stumbled back and toppled back off the wall with a screeching cry that ended with a loud crunch.

All along the wall, similar scenes were playing out as the opening salvo cut down over half the geth still present. It was impossible to keep synthetics on the back foot for long however, and within seconds of the initial barrage, the geth had prepared their response. A rain of bullets shot from the walltop, forcing Shepard to duck back behind the boulder he was using as cover with a venomous curse.

Small sparks and shards of stone were tossed haphazardly through the air as the suppressing fire never let up, never gave him an opening to get away. Shepard silently cursed the geth, the frigate from yesterday that forced him to overexert himself, and Dr. Chakwas for forbidding him from using his psionics. He'd have to rely on someone else to take them down, and that wasn't something he was used to.

Fortunately, they came through sooner rather than later. The distinctive roar of an alloy cannon sounded, and the fire on his position abruptly disappeared. As soon as he realized it, Shepard had rolled out of cover and trained his rifle back on the wall, where Tali stood over the broken corpse of one of the geth and expertly kept two more busy with a chaotic mass of tech mines and flechettes.

Well now, he thought, his hackles rising at the sight. We can't have that at all.

In a fraction of a second, he'd lined up two shots and sent plasma racing toward each. The geth, distracted as they were by Tali's efforts, had no chance to react before the super-energized particles struck like the wrath of god. One of the geth took the bolt directly in the chest and died instantly in an eruption of white fluid and molten metal.

The other was slightly more fortunate. The hastily aimed bolt struck it on the shoulder and sheared off its left arm, as well as a small portion of its torso, in a shower of sparks and slag. The geth didn't miss a beat though, instantly moving its gun into a stronger firing position without even releasing the trigger. It was, Shepard had to admit, kind of impressive.

It also let Tali finally catch it however, and the storm of vahlenite flechettes tore through its chest with a deafening roar. The blow tossed the geth onto its back in a burst of white fluid and ruined electronics, where it lay still. The quarian had just enough time to turn to face her next target when the wall beneath her exploded outward.

"Tali!" Shepard cried, sudden panic rushing through his veins as the battlement she stood on collapsed beneath her feet, sending her tumbling down into the dust below. Fuck doctor's orders, he thought angrily, even as his psionics burst to life. At the speed of thought, bright streamers of purple energy whipped through the air and grabbed the falling girl out of the air.

The sudden exertion sparked a heavy throbbing in his temples, but he ignored it with practiced ease. Now wasn't the time to worry about overdoing it.

He pulled her out of the slowly settling dust, only inches ahead of all four of the ogres charging through it. The sudden, instinctive shock of fear at the sight sapped his concentration just enough to utterly break his psionic hold. Tali tumbled to the hard ground, just barely out of reach of the lead ogre, with a yelp of surprise and terror.

Shepard sucked in a panicked breath, only to blow it out a heartbeat later as a tight storm of vahlenite shards flew over Tali's head and drilled the ogre in the chest. The impact brought its charge up short and filled the air with thick orange blood, giving the quarian just enough time to scramble to her feet and start running before it could catch her.

A beat later, Nihlus, wreathed in dark energy, came flying in from out of nowhere and smacked into the lead ogre like a freight train. The turian's momentum was so great that it bowled the ogre over completely, knocking it back into all three of its fellows. Nihlus followed the move too, practically surfing on the ogre's chest as it knocked down its companions. His alloy cannon swung around into the ogre's face and roared. Orange blood burst out of the ruined remains of its head in a mind-bogglingly large spray, completely covering Nihlus and all three surviving ogres.

As one, the three loosed a furious shout and threw the corpse of their companion out of the way, taking Nihlus with it. The turian hit the ground in a roll, just barely avoiding the dead ogre's heavy body as it landed right behind him. He turned the momentum of the roll into vertical motion and spun to his feet, alloy cannon leveled and steady on the ogres. All of three of them immediately clambered back to their feet and charged at the turian in a blind rage, screaming incoherently all the while.

Nihlus faced their charge with an eerie calm, firing shot after shot into their screaming blitz. Flechettes flew through the air in a nigh-constant stream, tearing deep into the armor and flesh of the monsters, but never doing quite enough to bring them down. It kept them moving slowly though, and that was all the opening Tali needed.

A flick of her hand sent a new, untested techmine Shepard had helped her put together last night straight at the nearest one. The penetrator mine, as she had taken to calling it, latched onto its shoulder and cemented its hold by slamming three long, sharp points into and through its armor. It had just enough time to whirl around and bellow a challenge at Tali before the tightly focused shaped charge in the mine detonated.

The explosive tore open an enormous gaping hole in the ogre's armor, one more than large enough to let in the storm of shrapnel the mine carried. Dozens of incredibly sharp pyramids, the largest no bigger than a pebble, sprayed out of the mine like the galaxy's most ludicrous shotgun. None of the pieces would be able to pierce the monster's armor, not even when propelled by the charge, but the creature's insides were a very different story. Semi-cybernetic they may have been, but they were still shackled to the bounds of flesh. Razor sharp flechettes sprayed from the mine in a devastating swarm, moving just weakly enough to bounce off the inside of the ogre's armor, and with each bounce lacerating more and more of its innards. One by one, the ogre's insides were turned into little more than ground beef. It managed four stumbling, uneven steps toward Tali before one of its eyes burst from the inside in a fountain of orange blood and it fell to the earth with an almost-silent wheeze.

"Hah!" the quarian crowed triumphantly. "It worked!"

"Good, but don't get distracted," Shepard snapped, even as he took a potshot at one of the last two ogres. The plasma splashed against its back to no visible effect, but captured its attention nonetheless. The ogre spun toward him and its mouth dropped open in a mighty roar.

And that's when Garrus shot it. A bolt of brilliant green slammed into the ogre's open mouth, and its roar turned into choking gurgles as its mouth and throat boiled away in plumes of orange steam. All that could be heard from it was a low wheezing as it immediately dismissed Shepard and charged toward the resident cyber commando.

Garrus remained steady under its furious white eyes, carefully maneuvering his rifle to dial in one more shot. As the ogre crossed the halfway point separating them, he muttered something under his breath and squeezed the trigger. Plasma spat from the rifle and slammed straight into one of the ogre's white eyes. The fluid inside boiled away instantly, causing the organ to pop like an overinflated balloon, and leave a path straight into the monster's skull. Supercharged particles flew straight through the perforated opening, pouring into its skull with furious abandon. Thick clouds of orange steam billowed out of its ruined eye as the ogre fell over dead mid-stride.

"There are no more hostiles within my sensor range," Legion announced a beat later, prompting Shepard to glance over at the last ogre and find Tali and Nihlus standing over its ruined corpse.

Before Shepard could say anything in response, Garrus cut in. "Hey Shepard? I think I win this one."

The commander sighed loudly. "Yea, I can't really argue that," he said with a shake of his head. "I blame the fancy eye, just don't let it go to your head."

"Me, Shepard? Perish the thought."

Shepard rolled his eyes, but didn't respond. A wave of his hand brought his people back together to regroup and as one, they made their way into Saren's research facility. The commander wasn't exactly sure what they were going to find inside, but the list of probabilities started at 'like Peak 15' and only got worse from there. He sighed as he reached the door and prepared to move inside. This was not going to be fun.

* * *

The interior of the facility utterly failed to meet Shepard's lovecraftian expectations. For the last few minutes, they had been moving through empty, sterile hallways painted a generic off-white color. There were no shrieking corpses stapled to the walls, no signs of mind-bending horrors beyond human comprehension. There wasn't even any deceptively delicate alien machinery capable of horrific disfigurement and vivisections. On the surface, it looked little different from a mundane office building or maybe a quiet hospital one could find anywhere else in the galaxy.

And yet it still filled Shepard with dread. There was nothing he consciously noticed, but nevertheless, he found himself growing more and more perturbed as they crept deeper into the facility. The place was built and run by a sentient superdreadnought and its functionally insane partner, or thrall, Shepard wasn't quite sure yet, but it still seemed almost _normal_. The disparity between what he'd expected and what he got was just too much to reconcile, and it was throwing him off.

Which is why he was so glad when they emerged from the corridor into the lowest level of a long, multi-storied hall. The walls to either side were lined with thick, sealed doors comprised entirely of transparent plastic and sturdy seeming bars. Nazara was clearly not content with only two rows of cells however. Instead there were six, three on each side and stacked on top of each other from floor to ceiling. Each layer above the first sported an identical layer of metal walkways and connecting stairways that, when combined with the doors, gave the hall the look and feel of a prison cell block.

Except prisons were meant to hold people, and Shepard wasn't sure that label could be applied to the beings behind the bars any longer. Nearly every alien race in the galaxy was represented in these cages, but despite all their external differences, there was one, clear commonality between them all. There was no mind behind their actions, no intelligence behind their vacant stares. Looking at them was like watching ambulatory manikins.

"Now this is just creepy," Ashley muttered under her breath.

"_Keelah_," Tali whispered at the same time. "What happened to them?"

"At a guess?" Garrus answered calmly, though his voice held a hint of suppressed tension. "This is the end result of indoctrination."

"That's a cheery thought," Shepard said bitterly. He couldn't disagree with the turian's assessment though. From what Shiala had said, indoctrination was mind control on a level they'd never even imagined was possible. Something that deep had to have permanent side effects, and turning people into mindless vegetables would definitely qualify. A small shudder crept up and down his spine as he watched a brain-fried salarian walking into the door to his cell, taking step after useless step, despite the futility. This was the fate that awaited any 'survivors' of the Reapers' purge.

His hands curled into tight fists and he had to fight desperately against the sudden, seething fury that erupted at that thought. It wasn't going to end this way. Not so long as he drew breath. "Let's go," he ordered curtly, his voice tense and thick with his suppressed rage. "We need to find a good spot for the bomb."

"What about these people?" Tali asked half-heartedly, pity and uncertainty weighing heavily on her voice. "We can't just leave them here to be exploded."

Shepard scowled tightly. "We're doing them a favor."

"By killing them?" the quarian asked pointedly.

"Look at them!" he snapped at her with an encompassing wave of his hand. "They're already dead, their bodies just don't know it yet." He stopped himself and took a deep, noisy breath as he tried to force his frustration and disgust away from the forefront of his mind. "I don't like it any more than you do, but the best they can hope for now is a clean death." She had nothing to say in response to that. He sighed heavily and said, "Let's just get through here quickly."

"Amen to that," Ashley murmured, and the squad hurried ahead along the gently curving path.

About halfway across the hall however, an unfamiliar voice called out hurriedly. "Hey! Stop! Please! Please stop!" it said, the words tumbling out in a rush. The unexpected sound grabbed the attention of the entire squad and their cautiously hurried pace slowed to a stop. Shepard whirled toward the source of the voice, only to find a lone salarian occupying a cell on the second level of the complex. As soon as he noticed he had the commander's attention, the salarian waved desperately and called out again. "Please! Let me out of here!"

"Stay down here and watch my back," Shepard ordered the squad. "I'll be back in a minute." When murmurs of assent came back, he slapped on his mass effect module and took a running leap that threw him up and over the edge of the walkway. He landed lightly right in front of the salarian's cell and turned off the module, then eyed the salarian. "Who are you?"

"Private Meno Savat," the salarian said, nearly too fast to be understood. "Third Infiltration Regiment, STG. Captured on reconnaissance six, no, seven days ago. You, you are XCOM right? I knew someone would come." A visible shudder raced through his whole body. "Open the door. I need to get out."

Part of Shepard wanted to do just that and get the poor guy running for safety. Something kept him back though. Something about the salarian's behavior was just... not quite right. He couldn't pinpoint anything specific, but something was definitely wrong, and where mind control was involved, that was all his ingrained paranoia needed to keep him from cooperating. "What happened here?" he asked instead, some small part of him hoping his suspicions were wrong.

"How should I know?" Meno demanded incredulously. "There was never any questions. Just whispers and poking and cutting. They were looking for something, I don't know what. How long it took me to snap from the incessant whispering, maybe? Doesn't matter. I need out."

The pit fell out of Shepard's stomach. 'Incessant whispering' could really only mean one thing in his mind. Garrus was right. The people in the cages, all of them, were the leftovers of indoctrination tests. What Nazara had wanted, he couldn't imagine, but it was clear that Meno here did not escape unscathed. He blew out a low breath and hated himself for the words he was about to utter. "I can't do that. Nazara's in your head, controlling you. I can't have you reporting anything before we're done here."

"No!" the salarian practically shrieked. He threw himself against the bars and clear plastic as he continued. "No! I have to get out of here! I have work to do. I _need_ to get out."

"Sorry," Shepard mumbled, unable to look at the crazed salarian. "I can't let you out."

"NO!" Meno screeched at the top of his lungs. "I have to do what it says!" His right arm pulled back and shot forward in a brutal punch that utterly shattered both plastic door and the salarian's arm. Green blood and sharp shards of plastic flew out of the new hole as the twisted, broken and mangled limb, barely recognizable as an arm, reached for Shepard.

"Let me out!" Meno screamed inconsolably and began chanting the same phrase, over and over again, the words coming out faster with each repetition until it was nothing more than wordless noise. "Let me out! Letmeout, letmeout, lemmeoutlemmeoutlemmeoutlemmeout."

Shepard instinctively threw himself away from the sudden attack, only remembering in mid-motion that he was standing on a narrow walkway a dozen feet in the air. His jump carried him off of the walkway and all the way to the floor below, where he landed on his back with all the grace and gentleness of a brick. Shepard groaned softly in pain as the impact jostled his still-tender burns, but counted his blessings that he was in his armor. Out of it, that fall would have been a hell of a lot worse.

"Shepard!" Tali cried worriedly as he hit. She rushed over and helped him up. "Are you alright?"

"I've had worse," he said dismissively as he let her pull him to his feet. He shot an uncertain, pitying glance back at the raving and nearly frothing Meno thrashing against the door to his cage. "Garrus was right. This is indoctrination at its finest. We need to get out of here."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Ashley said as she nervously fingered her plasma rifle and stared at the crazed salarian. She deliberately closed her eyes, turned away and double-timed it toward the hall's exit, leaving the rest of the squad to hurry along in her wake. As they left, Meno's screams continued to echo through the room in a distracting current of sound full of feverish intensity and utter madness.

* * *

Urdnot Wrex normally didn't like fighting the geth. Fighting was his passion, war flowed through his veins like blood, and he'd never turn down a challenge. But the geth were so far down his list of preferred opponents that they may as well not be there. They were too clinical, all logic and no heart, no imagination. They were masterful battle planners and their technology was impressive, more than enough so to make them a challenge even if it was no match for the humans', but they were limited by their nature. There was never any crazy risks, never any insane gambits. Nothing he hadn't seen before. In other words, fighting the geth was boring.

Which is how this particular group managed to surprise the hell out of him.

Before anyone could react to their sudden appearance, nearly the same instant they landed, two orbs the size of his head, each colored a deep, inky black contained within a nimbus of the telltale blue of dark energy, burst out of their formation on a straight path toward the team's tank. Without stopping to think, Wrex threw himself away from the tank, scrambling to find cover from both the front and rear amongst the rubble. He didn't know what those balls were, but they couldn't be anything good.

He'd barely finished that thought before he was proven correct. A tremendous, all-consuming roar filled the air, utterly drowning out all other sounds, as the orbs collided with Bane and sent the courtyard into pandemonium. Hurricane force winds burst to life from nothing, adding even more force to the invisible hand that had grabbed the krogan and slowly started dragging him back. He forced himself forward, using every ounce of power he and his armor had at their disposal, but the pull was inexorable. Inch by slow, painful inch, he slid back.

A quick, worried glance over his shoulder let him know exactly why. There, hovering serenely in mid-air, was a single enormous singularity where Bane had once been. The ground beneath it heaved upward, the earth buckling and tearing itself apart in its rush to feed the hole in reality. Everything nearby not buried deep into the ground or able to fight it was pulled inexorably toward that single point in a swirling maelstrom of raw, destructive power. Including the three surviving salarians under his command. He could see two cowering behind heavy chunks of rubble from the wall, while the third clutched at the nearest handholds, fighting desperately to get his feet back onto the ground.

Heh, Wrex thought, half of him amused and the other half disgruntled. This was the single most powerful biotic singularity he had ever seen. It was also one hell of an opener. His lips quirked into the toothy smirk that always managed to unnerve the Carnifex, standing silent testament to the thrill that surged through his blood. This was gonna be fun.

The first step would be to stop the singularity. After all, you couldn't fight very well with a black hole sucking up all the bullets. With a muttered thanks to Aleena, the crazy asari merc who had taught him how, he set himself and whirled to face the singularity. At the same time, the loose salarian's arms finally gave out. With a wordless scream of animal panic over the comm, the salarian was sucked into the vortex and hit the edge of the noodle effect. His body stretched and narrowed, getting infinitely worse as it got closer and closer to the core of the singularity. The last thing Wrex saw of the salarian was a single hand, stretched out to over a meter long, clawing desperately at thin air, before it too was swallowed whole.

He scowled, absently grabbing the Carnifex's robot as it slid past him toward the same fate, and flicked his other hand out in the one of the simplest of biotic moves. A bolt of negatively-charged dark energy shot from his hand and sailed deep into the all-consuming void of the singularity. As if a switch had been flipped, the singularity died instantly, the positively-charged field of dark energy sustaining it simply unable to compensate for the abrupt loss of mass. Without the singularity, the winds and noise died as well, finally allowing Wrex to hear the chaos that had erupted all around him, as Kirrahe and his men out of the thing's range waged war against the geth. And without the singularity, the geth not so engaged were free to open fire.

A deadly storm of small, hypervelocity bullets filled the air, pinging off Wrex's armor with a shower of sparks in the few seconds before he could deploy his riot shield. The shield wouldn't last long under this kind of firepower, but it bought him a few seconds of relative calm to survey the battlefield. Directly ahead of him, in a loose cluster stood a trio of geth troopers and two destroyers wholly occupied with pressing he and his people. Behind them, all the way across the courtyard and clinging to the outer wall of the facility, were several hoppers. Their constant jumping made it nearly impossible for an accurate count, but he was confident there were at least four, probably more. They were all ignoring his group though, in favor of offering sniper support against Kirrahe and the other salarian groups.

Which, surprisingly, actually seemed necessary. The rest of the distraction team, not having had to deal with a sudden singularity, had fared significantly better than his own. From what he could see, only three had fallen in the opening move. The rest were mobile, if not unharmed, and in cover, exchanging salvos with the geth in a fierce back and forth that kept over two thirds of the geth forces occupied. Wrex snorted internally. Maybe that 'hold the line' speech actually meant something.

He didn't have any longer to contemplate it though, for the very next second something moved behind the geth pressing him and his instincts screeched in alarm. Long past ever doubting his instincts in a fight, the krogan immediately hurled himself aside in a desperate dodge. Less than a second later, a blindingly bright red beam as big around as his fist shot past him, only not taking a chunk out of his side by mere centimetres. Faster than he could blink, the beam passed him with a rush of displaced air and stuck the wall behind him, where it exploded violently and threw another cloud of thick dust and smoke into the air. Good thing he'd dodged, he thought. That would have gone straight through his shield, and probably his armor too.

A second later, the krogan came out of his dodge and landed heavily on his side, unable to catch himself and keep his shield in position at the same time. He shrugged off the minor flash of discomfort from his ribs and rolled to his feet with a speed and grace that belied his bulk, always mindful to keep his shield between him and the geth. His eyes instinctively sought out the source of the beam, only to find the biggest bipedal geth platform he had ever seen suddenly standing among the troopers and destroyers he had been fighting.

It looked more or less the same as most geth platforms, vaguely quarianoid with three-fingered hands, four limbs and a flashlight for a face, but it existed on a completely different scale from the other infantry geth. Its almost blindingly white frame stood almost as tall as an armature, taller if one included the pair of antenna reaching up from its shoulders, easily letting it loom over the destroyers and positively dwarf the troopers surrounding it. Especially when one considered its overall bulk. Massive armored plating clung to thick, powerful synthetic muscles that bulged and rippled with every move it made. It looked like it could bend a vahlenite I-beam with its bare hands.

Instead of doing so however, it wielded a long rifle, one utterly unlike anything he had ever seen the geth wield. This rifle forsook the smooth lines and graceful curves of most normal geth creations, in favor of a boxy, angular stock that carried a truly enormous barrel. The distance made it difficult to judge its size precisely, but it was at least the size of his fist. And it was glowing a sullen, angry orange as it struggled to vent an enormous amount of heat. Definitely the source of that beam.

Wrex pushed aside his surprise at seeing the geth with energy weapons, he could worry about it after they were dead, and leveled his attention on the big one. "Deal with the little shits," he rumbled over his people's comm, not bothering to hide the anticipation leaking into his tone, or the bloodthirsty grin spreading behind his helmet. Blue light burst from his body in an intoxicating corona as he continued. "I've got the big guy."

Shocked exclamations raced back from the two surviving salarians, but he paid it no mind. They'd do their job, or he'd have to kill everything himself. It made no real difference to him. They just needed to distract the others long enough. His heavy plasma settled into his grip, even as his biotics kicked in and he _moved_.

The biotic charge carried him across the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and spat him out straight into one of the destroyers. The geth's shields flared and shattered from the force and it was sent sprawling by the impact. Before the other geth could do more than begin to turn, he threw a fist toward the ground and exploded in a biotic nova. The omnidirectional push caught all six of the geth, and while it sent the troopers flying, and even knocked away the destroyers, it did no more than stumble the giant.

The sound of the salarians and the robot seizing the opening he gave them erupted behind him but he could not spare the attention to track it, for the giant retaliated immediately. With speed that should be impossible for its size, the geth had grabbed the barrel of his gun and yanked the krogan toward it. Wrex, unprepared for the abrupt tug, stumbled forward, chin-first into a powerful blow from the butt of the geth's rifle.

His helmet took the worst of the hit, but it still jerked his head around and he instinctively released his grip on the heavy plasma. He stumbled back and in the process, lashed out with his now-free hand and sent a lance of biotic force slamming into its chest. The geth was thrown from his feet, letting go of Wrex's weapon in the process, and landed heavily on its back less than half a meter away.

As it landed however, the rifle it still clutched let out a soft chime and was immediately pointed straight at his head. Running purely on instinct, Wrex threw himself to the ground the instant he noticed the chime, but even that wasn't fast enough to avoid it entirely. Searing, all-consuming pain erupted from his back as the beam carved a deep furrow through his hump, punching through his armor like it wasn't even there. A bellow of raw agony tore from his throat as he hit the ground in a boneless flop, barely able to move, or even think, through the overwhelming pain.

Some small part of him heard and cataloged the sounds of the geth climbing to its feet and the pain was suddenly drowned by a flood of intoxicating, mindless rage. His hearts beat loudly, a constant, staccato rhythm that drove his anger ever higher until everything sank beneath the tide of his rage. The fury of his ancestors poured through his veins, seeped into his muscles, trickled over his tongue. In that instant, Urdnot Wrex ceased to be. He was something different, something simultaneously less and so much more.

In that instant, he was Krogan. And he had a target.

* * *

"Huh," Shepard said neutrally, his voice flat and emotionless, as he stood frozen, blocking the doorway out of the cramped hallway behind him and into another cavernous room, easily big enough to park two of the _Normandy_. His thoughts had slammed to a screeching halt, caught in a swirling quagmire of revulsion, disgust, outrage and pity. "And here I was beginning to think they didn't have it in 'em."

"What?" Garrus asked. Some small, distant part of Shepard instinctively tracked the turian's motion as he took the two steps needed to see around him. "What are yo- By the spirits!"

The commander barely heard the words, his attention had been utterly consumed by the horrors in this enormous room. Yea, he thought detachedly. This is an ogre production plant.

Enormous cloning vats stood in neat, ordered rows that stretched all the way across the gigantic room. There had to be hundreds of the things, and each one bore aftermarket modifications that were as unfamiliar to Shepard as they were disturbing. The core was a standard, if ludicrously huge, transparent tube, full of synthesized amniotic fluid and a single juvenile krogan, in most cases too young to have yet formed his natural armor. It varied in one important way however. Three thick tubes slowly pulsing with _something_ hung from the ceiling and plugged into each and every tank. These tubes, one attached above and two at oblique angles below, slipped through the walls of the tank in the form of large metal spikes that impaled the body floating within, holding it firmly in place. The spikes reminded Shepard forcibly of the dragon's teeth he'd seen on Eden Prime, the same technology that created the husks there.

The tanks themselves, while disturbing, were almost comforting compared to what they held though. Cloned krogan, all clearly very young, bled freely around the spikes holding them in place. Thick, bloated and clearly necrotic tumors were pushed out into the tube to float freely by the slowly but visibly growing armor plating. Underneath that, their limbs were growing in lumpy, uneven patterns, giving the half-formed ogres grotesque, misshapen forms that were sure to haunt his nightmares for days. The worst by far, though, were the few clones that weren't unconscious. They thrashed and they fought, desperately struggling, and utterly failing, for freedom against their bonds and their own misshapen bodies, but there was no thought in their fight, no intelligence. Just pain and the raw, primal need to escape it.

"I don't think the spirits had anything to do with this," Shepard muttered, the first stirrings of anger beginning to leak into his tone. Thank god Wrex wasn't here to see this. He took two jerking, uneven steps into the room and his grip tightened almost painfully on his rifle. Strangled gasps and exclamations of shock rang out from the rest of the squad as they finally got to see past him. He glanced over his shoulder and said in a half-growl, "Let's go. The sooner we can nuke this place, the better."

"You can say that again," Ashley agreed, and he could hear the grimace in her voice. "Jesus..." She snorted derisively as she and the rest of the squad trailed in behind him. "And Wrex wanted to keep this intact."

"To be fair, he thought it was a genophage cure. I doubt he was completely rational. Well, as rational as he ever is," Garrus offered with a strained chuckle that fell flat on the still, oppressive air of the room. He trailed off quickly as the very atmosphere seemed to take offense at the attempted levity.

Shepard grunted his agreement absentmindedly, more concerned with Tali's nervous presence as she tried to stay as close behind him as possible without actually touching. He fought down his shimmering anger with a colossal effort of will, looked over his shoulder and lightly touched his fingertips to her bicep. "It's alright, we just gotta get through here," he muttered to her quietly, instinctively flashing a comforting, if pointless, smile behind his helmet. To his relief the tension in her shoulders visibly relaxed a bit. He raised his voice and turned to the rest of the squad. "This is the production plant, that means there's some kind of control setup nearby, probably through that door opposite us. I want to put the bomb there. Move out."

Muttered acknowledgments came back and the squad hurried deeper into the room. They moved as quickly as they could through the seemingly endless rows of deformed mutants and future foot soldiers, while still keeping some vestige of stealth. No one, save maybe Legion, wanted to be in that room any longer than they absolutely needed to be. Except for the krogan in the lab coat just rounding the corner.

Shepard's eyes went wide as the scientist- the _krogan_ scientist -looked up from his datapad at the same instant. "Wh-" The lizard began, only to change mid-word to a warning that echoed throughout the cavernous room. "Intruders!"

He'd just finished the word when a ball of plasma shot past Shepard with the familiar thrumming whine of a plasma sniper. Without shields and without armor, the scientist barely had time to voice his pain as a projectile originally designed to put down mutons bored into his chest. And despite Tuchanka's best efforts, the krogan were not mutons. The extreme heat sheared through flesh and bone alike, eating straight into his innards in a fraction of a second. Orange steam billowed out of the large hole in his chest as flesh burned and blood boiled, cooking the lizard from the inside out. He collapsed bonelessly, barely able to utter a quiet gasp as he died.

"Nice reaction time," Garrus said a beat later, sounding impressed.

"Thank you," Legion answered calmly. Without prompting, he continued. "Shepard-Commander, we do not detect any new communications. The alarm has not yet been sounded."

"Good," Shepard answered. "Le-" The commander cut himself off with a start as a sharp hiss rang out before the sound repeated itself a hundred times over in a deafening chorus. Sick dread settled in the pit of his stomach at the sound. It couldn't possibly mean anything good.

The next second, it sounded from the cloning vat directly to his left. He looked over and swore violently to himself as his fears were confirmed. Inside the tube, the spikes had retracted from the only mostly-complete ogre, and the warped, misshapen thing was waking up. As he watched, furious red eyes, streaked through with glowing white, as if someone had spilled a bucket of phosphorescent paint on a cherry, whirled once around the room and settled directly on him. Its face spasmed into a twitchy, uncoordinated scowl as it glared at him in mindless fury. One lumpy fist rose and slammed into the plastic between them, sending a spiderweb of cracks racing along it's surface.

"I thought you said there was no alarm!" Tali shrieked, her voice on the edge of panic.

"There wa-" Legion began, only for the commander to interrupt.

"No time!" he bellowed, grabbing Tali's shoulder and shoving her toward the exit. "Shut up and run!"

As one, the squad turned and ran, all pretenses of stealth forgotten. Somewhere behind them, plastic exploded and an echoing cry of raw, animal fury rang through the air. Then it started to repeat itself, just different enough to prove it wasn't an echo. The sound built and built into a deafening cacophony that reached deep into the commander's brain and tried to send him curling into a fetal ball on the ground. He shook it off with a curse and forced himself to run faster. The ogres were breaking loose, and the squad needed to be gone before they caught up.

Fortunately, the squad was not their only target. Instead of rushing them in an utterly unstoppable tide of bodies, the ogres began fighting among themselves. Roars of challenge, and pain, echoed off the high ceiling, building off each other as a truly massive slugging match, like nothing so much as an out of control bar brawl, broke out in every direction. Cloning vats cracked and broke as thousands of pounds of mutant lizard charged, or was thrown, into them, filling the air with deadly shards of small, razor sharp shrapnel. A small part of Shepard was baffled by the chaos, stubbornly insisting that there had to be a reason. Maybe the ogres were just too fresh to have whatever controls they have in the field? It tried to ponder further, but the rest of him told that part to shut up and be grateful. Whatever the reason, it worked in their favor. In the chaos erupting all around them, they barely had to deal with more than one of the things at a time.

And they all died quickly. The squad advanced at their best speed behind a veritable wall of vahlenite flechettes and penetrator mines, leaving, sometimes literally, piles of the misshapen creatures in their wake. Orange blood pooled in thick puddles that were scattered by their footsteps, creating small, swirling currents in the otherwise still fluid. With the constant screams and crashes echoing all around them, it came together into a truly nightmarish scene.

Their charge never faltered however, and they reached the door an infinitely long minute later. Ashley barreled straight into the door control without stopping and bounced off the opening doorway with a muttered curse. Garrus caught her on the rebound and shoved her back the right way and through the door, just ahead of the rest of the squad. Nihlus bounded through the doorway last, spun and fired his alloy cannon straight into the forehead of the single ogre right behind him.

The creature fell lifelessly with an earthshaking thud and slid along the floor, carried by its momentum, to rest at his feet. Garrus stepped forward and toed the corpse. He got no response, so he shrugged, holstered his rifle, and bent over to grab the thing. Synthetic muscles flexed powerfully and with a grunt of effort, lifted the corpse a few inches off the ground. The turian whipped it back over into the cloning room and Legion cued the door to close and lock.

It sealed with a very solid, and equally reassuring, thud and the holographic controls over it flashed from green to red. Shepard blew out a low breath of relief and cast a look over his people. "Anyone hurt?"

Various negatives came back, in varying degrees of steadiness, but they all seemed ready to continue so he shrugged and turned his attention to the room. For once, it looked like they were in luck. The room was full of computers, medical readouts, graphs, spreadsheets, all the kinds of things one would expect in the control room for a secret facility churning out evil mutant krogan.

"Huh, looks like we found the control center," Ashley gave voice to his thoughts. "Should we bring the nuke in?"

"Ye-" Shepard began, only for a shrill, panicked, female voice to cry over him.

"Wait!" she cried, prompting the entire squad to whirl on her with weapons raised. A pale blue asari, clad in an orange and brown outfit, paused in standing from behind a desk, her hands twitching by her sides, as if unsure if she should raise them or not. Wide green eyes darted wildly between all the guns aimed at her. "D- don't shoot!" she squeaked weakly, barely able to force the words out through her terror.

"Freeze!" Shepard barked harshly, only just restraining his instincts to shoot. The asari complied, stopping so abruptly and so suddenly, he wouldn't have been greatly surprised if she had obeyed literally as well as figuratively. He jerked his rifle toward the center of the room. "Get away from the desk and keep your hands where I can see 'em."

A small, terrified squeak was pulled from her throat and she nodded rapidly, bouncing her head fast enough that Shepard was surprised she kept her balance. Her hands flew up into the air beside her head and she took small, jerky and tentative steps out into the middle of the room. The whole time, her wide-eyed gaze never left the barrel of Shepard's gun.

Once she stopped, Shepard eyed her skeptically and asked, "Now, who are you and why shouldn't I kill you?"

"B-because I can help you!" she said in a rush. Her words tumbled over each other in their hurry to escape. "I c-can get you into Saren's private lab. All of his files. Just, just let me live and I'll show you the way."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at that. Surely Saren wouldn't be dumb enough to give a lackey access to his private lab, would he? Hopefully she'd have something more than that. The commander turned to Nihlus and spoke, deliberately just loud enough for her to hear. "You know him better than I do, Nihlus. A security hole that obvious sound like something he'd do?"

"No," the Spectre answered in the same manner, seemingly catching on to his ruse. "It doesn't."

"I agree," Shepard said. "It sounds like a trap." He made a small production out of turning his attention back to the asari and raising his voice back to normal levels. "I don't believe you."

"It's true!" she insisted with a cringe. Desperation crept into her voice in a suffocating rush. "He, he kept the in- indoctrination equipment there! He needed to give me access to do my job!"

The commander's eyes narrowed. What was she doing that required indoctrination? More, what did indoctrination equipment actually look like? "Explain."

"I- My name is Rana Thanoptis, and I'm a neurospecialist," she began slowly. Her words carried the cadence of being very carefully chosen. "Saren hired me to come here and do a job a few months ago. I didn't find out until I got here that it involved studying the effects of Sovereign's indoctrination on organic minds."

"So why didn't you leave?" Ashley asked pointedly.

"You think I had a choice?!" Thanoptis demanded with more resignation than anger. "It wasn't like I could negotiate with a Spectre!" She shuddered and her voice turned weak. "I had no choice. Right now, I just want to go home before that _thing_ takes my mind too."

"What are you talking about?" Nihlus asked, his voice both probing and, somehow, gentle.

"You think the indoctrination only affects prisoners?!" Her voice strengthened slightly, losing its hesitation as she lectured on familiar information. "Saren's ship, Sovereign, constantly emits some kind of psionic signal. Or at least, I assume it's psionic. None of my equipment can detect it, but it alters the subjects' minds. Induces visions, makes them see things that aren't there, or not see things that are. That makes it psionic, right?"

Shepard met her inquisitive glance with the blank face of his helmet and said nothing. She wasn't going to get any information from him. A beat later, she seemed to realize that, for she sighed and continued. "Saren calls it indoctrination. He uses it to control people. Direct exposure tends to turn them into mindless, willing thralls, like the salarian test subjects, but there's... side effects."

"What kind of side effects?" Shepard asked cautiously.

"It's makes the victim easier to control, but it's a degenerative condition. The stronger the indoctrination, the less useful the subject becomes. At its peak, they are nothing but puppets for Sovereign." She paused and visibly gathered herself. "And they aren't the only ones at risk."

"What do you mean?"

"Sovereign constantly emits this field. Just being near it is enough to start the indoctrination process. Eventually, it happens to everyone in the facility." She took a shaky breath. "My first test subject was the man I replaced. I just want out of here before the same thing happens to me."

Shepard hummed thoughtfully. Everything she was saying made sense, and it even explained why Sovereign let it happen. Apparently Saren's capabilities were worth the risk of someone else finding this information and possibly finding a way to counter it. It didn't answer one question though. "Why does Saren have you experimenting with it then?"

"Because I don't think Saren can control it," Thanoptis answered. "I think he's afraid it's controlling him."

Ashley snorted. "Gee, ya think?"

The asari sent her a helpless look. "I don't know. I don't know what Sovereign is, I don't know how it works, and to be honest, I don't want to know. I just want to get out of here alive and with my mind intact." She turned to Shepard and her gaze turned beseeching. "Please, that's everything I know. Will you let me go?"

Now _that_ wasn't going to happen. What she knew could well prove to be the key to beating the Reapers, and he wasn't going to let that get away. He needed to get to Saren's lab first though. With a loud sigh, he holstered his rifle and motioned for the rest of the squad to do the same. "First, Saren's lab."

"Right!" she said in a rush, her voice breaking with relief. She pulled off her omnitool and held it out to him. When he took it, she pointed at a door set in the wall behind her. "That door opens into a hallway. The right eventually leads out toward the front entrance, and the left dead ends at the elevator to Saren's lab. As long as you're holding my omnitool, you will have free access to get in. As far as I'm aware, there are no traps."

Shepard nodded his understanding and weighed the omnitool in his armored hand. "Thanks," he said. "And for what it's worth, sorry about this."

"Wh-" was all she managed to get out before the arc thrower in his other hand fired. Electricity arced and crackled from the small box and into her twitching form. Her muscles locked at full extension, bowing her back and sending her toppling to the floor and blissful unconsciousness.

"Shepard!" Tali exclaimed from behind him. Her voice was shocked and tinged by disbelief. "What are you doing?!"

"She's the closest thing in existence to an expert on Reaper indoctrination," he answered her over his shoulder. "With what she knows, we could stop anyone else winding up like Meno. I'm not letting that chance get away." He turned to face her. "I'm not asking you to like it. Hell, I don't like it myself, but we're talking about the lives and freaking sanity of possibly trillions of people."

"Commander Shepard is right," Nihlus said into the ensuing silence. "I was about to do the same."

Shepard nodded at Nihlus in grim acknowledgement, even as Tali slumped in place. "Y- you're right, but it doesn't _feel_ right," she muttered at length.

"If war ever feels right, you're doing it wrong," Shepard said with a grimace. His gaze turned distant, caught in the memories of Khar'shan that passed through him in a rush. When he spoke, it was wholly in the grip of a surge of self-loathing. "I should know."

"I, I guess," she said, unable to look at him. "Let's just get this over with."

"Right," Shepard said. He shook his head and forced the memories back behind the iron walls of discipline. "Legion, Tali, get on the horn to EDI and get the bomb delivered, then start priming it. The techs can take our guest here to a holding cell on the _Normandy_. The rest of you, with me. We're going up to Saren's lab and bringing back everything that's not bolted down."

* * *

A thick orange haze crept over Wrex's vision as the blood rage took hold. Raw, primal fury surged through his veins in an intoxicating, maddening rush. His thoughts all faded into silence under the base need to rip, tear, _kill_. Logic, rationality, restraint all drowned under the overwhelming, all-consuming madness that was his birthright. And even through his fury, his lips quirked into a wry smile.

The Carnifex thought him dangerous for his skills, his abilities, and his experience. The human had no idea just how wrong he was. Several krogan were Wrex's equal in the art of war. They were few, but they were strong. Warlords in their own right. And among them, he was not the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the smartest. Yet he was the one they feared. And no alien, not even the Carnifex, could possibly hope to understand why.

He was the only one among them, the last of his kind to remember, to _understand_ what it meant to be Krogan. The weak, mewling varren that had replaced his people under the thumb of the genophage were incapable. The old, barking veterans were too consumed by past glories. None were left to understand, to honor and hone that which made the krogan into _warriors_ instead of tools. None but he.

Seething hate billowed in his chest, blanketed his mind, washing away his very sense of self. And he, as no other living krogan could, directed it, channeled it, _controlled _it. Ancient, primordial fury was leashed and bound, forced into compliance through sheer force of will and intuitive self-awareness. Mindless rage was given purpose, supplied with guidance. The need to kill was focused, sharpened to a razor's edge and honed into a weapon unlike any other. A weapon that would visit ruination and annihilation on all his enemies. Urdnot Wrex was not feared for being the greatest fighter in the galaxy. He was feared for being the greatest krogan. The _only_ krogan to conquer the blood rage.

And it was time the geth understood that.

With a wordless cry of fury, the krogan threw himself at the giant geth in a low tackle, slamming his shoulder into its waist and taking both of them down to the ground. A high chitter sounded in his ears as they hit, but he ignored it in favor of pinning the geth under his immense weight. One hand grabbed the barrel of the geth's gun and, with rage-endowed strength, tore it from its grip. Red-hot steel collapsed under the power of his grasp, closing and sealing the barrel before an almost negligent motion threw the gun, barrel twisted beyond any hope of repair, away.

The geth wasted no time trying to reclaim it and immediately went on the offensive. Massive synthetic muscles flexed and pulled in tight motions underneath him. Blow after powerful blow slammed into the krogan's sides, chest and even head. With every blow, blood flowed from the hole in his hump in thick, uneven rivers that slowly dripped from him to paint the pristine white shell of the geth an ochre orange. One of the geth's hands came around him and slammed into the hole with colossal force, piercing through what little his regeneration had been able to repair and digging deep into the blood and fat of his hump. The hand grabbed, twisted and recklessly tore apart his flesh in a bid to drive him away. In normal circumstances, such a move would have completely disabled him with mind-numbing agony.

In the grip of the blood rage, it only made him angrier. His left hand grabbed the geth's arm and, with a wordless cry of fury, tore its hand out of his back in a fountain of thick orange blood. At the same time, his other hand pulled the geth's other arm between their bodies, where it was pinned by his immense weight. Now left completely open, the geth could do little to stop or avoid the vicious headbutt the krogan sent its way. His headplate slammed into the geth's eye with a resounding crunch as the delicate structures in the eye shattered.

The geth chittered again, a piercing, high-pitched sound that cut through the melody of combat like a knife. The next instant, a sniper round slammed into his left shoulder with pinpoint accuracy, piercing through his armor with a tortured squeal and embedding itself deep in the flesh beyond. Muscle and bone parted just as easily, unable to stop the phenomenal power of a mass effect sniper rifle, even after it went through a layer of the strongest known material in existence. He could distantly feel the round bouncing off the armor on the far side and continuing to tear his arm apart.

Instantly, his other arm flashed out and formed a biotic barrier, a solid wall of the mass effect, a few feet away from him, just in time to catch another two rounds from geth hoppers clinging to the wall of the facility. His eyes narrowed at them, full of raw venom, but he had no time to respond. The giant geth beneath him took advantage of his moment of inattention and bucked him off with a powerful undulation.

The krogan fell off to the side with a surprised growl, hit the ground and rolled to his feet in an instant. Sniper rounds flew through the air all around him, but he paid it little mind as he threw himself back behind his barrier and at the recovering geth. His wounded arm lashed out in a wild, sloppy haymaker that forced it to step aside, placing it perfectly between he and the hoppers. As soon as he had that small cover, he let the barrier drop and fired a biotic warp straight into the giant's chest. Metal screamed in tortured agony as the chaotically shifting mass effect fields tore its torso apart on the atomic level. It lasted for only a second, but when the warp passed, the geth was left standing with a ragged, deep hole its chest that dumped thick white liquid all over the ground in large streams.

At that sight, a bloodthirsty, feral grin spread over the krogan's face, perfectly matching the insane rage burning in his eyes. He shouted in triumph as his good hand closed over one of the geth's wrists and spun on one foot while the other lashed out in a powerful kick to the geth's waist. The motion pulled the synthetic's arm taut for a brief fraction of a second before the weakened and damaged torso and shoulder could take no more.

With a sound like tearing soggy paper, the geth's arm tore free, small pieces of its shoulder joint still affixed to the limb. The krogan stumbled at the abrupt lack of resistance, but immediately turned it into a weapon. He spun with the sudden momentum he'd gained, coming all the way around and slamming the arm into its original owner's head with colossal force. The broken flashlight flew out of its casing and over his shoulder, even as its head twisted and tore free in a geyser of white. The geth chittered once and its remaining arm twitched into a loose fist, but before it could so much as raise it, he thrust the arm he was holding straight into the hole in its torso. The geth shuddered once and gave off a quiet whine as it fell to its knees then slid to the ground.

The krogan, his birthright singing triumphantly through his veins, immediately threw his attention toward the hoppers that had ruined his arm, just in time to see the last one brought down under a hail of gunfire. He cast around, desperately seeking a target to vent his rage, but everywhere he looked, there were only salarians. The fury in his blood whispered insidiously, traitorously through his mind, begged him to kill. To rend asunder those who had poisoned his people and condemned billions of infants to die in the egg. To maim and burn the eternal enemies of himself and all his people.

And he denied it. Impossible will and discipline clamped down on the pulsing rage boiling within him, fought and corralled it back into its cage like one would an escaped varren. There were no enemies here, nothing more to fight. His hearts beat furiously and his whole body shook with repressed urges as bit by bit, piece by piece, he excised the blood rage. The tides of his ancestral fury receded, forced back by the strength of his will to reveal himself. Urdnot Wrex blinked, his injuries suddenly erupting into deep, throbbing agony as the adrenaline faded alongside the rage. He could already feel his regeneration kicking in, but, as hurt as he was, it was going to take some time to heal.

"Urdnot," a voice called cautiously, prompting him to turn and find the salarian captain nervously watching him, pointedly not _quite_ pointing his gun at him. The krogan's lips quirked into a wry smile. He still had it. "Are you in control of yourself?"

Wrex grunted, the sound coming out more pained than he had intended. "For the most part."

"Good. Shadow team has found a bomb site. It is time we leave."

He nodded in understanding and opened a comm line to the _Normandy_. "Exfil time," he announced. "Site's clean. Get us a portal."

A purple circle erupted in the air before him, heralding the arrival of a small selection of XCOM techs that hurried about collecting the wounded and dead, and scavenging from the geth, while Kirrahe and his surviving men hurried through. Wrex, his body covered in thick layers of white and orange blood, stomped in after them before a medic dragged him off to the sickbay. His last conscious thought before his wounds overcame him was a mild worry about falling on the woman.

* * *

When the elevator doors opened and disgorged the diminished squad into Saren's private lab, Shepard froze. The room was very clinical and clean, with its sterile white walls and bare metal floors. The only break in the monotony of the walls was a bank of computers and various electronic equipment that had been embedded in the wall directly across from them. He would have called it boring, if not for the room's contents.

For better or worse, the various pieces of equipment and half-complete experiments scattered around were far less bland. A pair of tables, each one just over seven feet long, had been laid out in the center of the room with mechanical precision. The table on the left held what must be the indoctrination equipment. Three small metallic objects, each shaped like a budding tulip and roughly the size of his head, stood in a neat formation atop the table, bathing the area in a soft blue glow with the gentle light emitted by the veins traced along their surface. Another of the objects, and the reason Shepard was confident in his guess, sat on the far end of the table. Unlike the other three however, a small spike, no more than half a meter long, protruded from its top and disappeared into the soft, squishy form of what was unmistakably a human brain. Thick blue veins traced strange patterns over the brain's surface, forcibly reminding Shepard of the husks back on Eden Prime, and even the ogres downstairs. It was a thoroughly disconcerting sight.

And as bad as it was, the other table was so much worse. Datapads, detailed physiological and psychological reports as well as brain scans at a glance, stood in neat stacks on one half of the surface in a macabre display, while the other half was dominated by a small cloning vat with scaled down versions of all the same modifications as the ogre tanks below. Inside it, pierced by all three spikes, was a human infant, no more than six months old, their body twisted and disfigured by the rampant cancer of Reaper modifications. Shepard's hands curled into fists and shook with leashed fury as he stared at the abomination in abject horror, the sight affecting him in a way the ogres never could have. That was one of _his_ people there, a human _child_. It set off every instinctive trigger he had. Sick fury and numb horror pounded through his mind in equal measure.

Ashley took it all in with a furious scowl. When she spoke, it carried an undertone of pure rage that spoke of imminent, and immense, violence. "Anyone else thinking that Marcaeus has finally got some competition for 'most fucked up mad scientist in the galaxy'?"

With an effort of will, the commander pulled his gaze away from the mutant baby and grunted his emphatic agreement. "Let's just get this over with. Ashley, you're on the datapads. Send the info to EDI if you can, pocket as many as you can if not." One hand waved at the table on the left. "Garrus, get at least one of the inactive indoctrination things to take back for the coats. Don't touch it directly if you can help it."

"On it," the turian replied, moments before Shepard could hear him bustling around searching for a way to transport the thing. At the same time, Ashley stepped around him and dug into the datapad stacks, pointedly not looking at the other end of the table.

The commander nodded and turned to the other turian before pointing at the far wall. "Nihlus, you know Saren better than the rest of us. Dig through that console and see if you can find anything useful." He blew out a long, resigned breath and settled his gaze on the cloning vat. "I'll take care of the kid."

The Spectre stepped up beside him, just close enough for his presence to be sensed. "Are you sure about that, Commander?" he asked over a private channel.

"Yea," Shepard answered, his voice a strange mix of resigned and determined. "It has to be done. No one deserves that, especially not a kid. And I'm not about to make someone else do it."

"Very well," Nihlus said, an undercurrent of strong approval running through his voice. The turian stepped around him and moved over to the terminal on the far wall.

Shepard watched him go the whole way, his mind going in circles around the undeniable fact that he did not want to do this. Infanticide was not something that needed another tally on his conscience. Damn himself for doing it, and damn Saren and the Reapers for making it necessary. His whole body shook with repressed emotion and his mind raced, desperately looking for a way around what needed to be done. But it was a futile effort, he knew. The kid was dead already, even if their body didn't know it yet, but god damn was it hard. He stood there, wallowing in indecision and cowardice for several long seconds.

When the turian reached the far side of the room however, he could no longer justify his inaction. With a heavy sigh and heavier heart, he stomped over to the vat and looked at the mutant, twisted baby floating inside. He could at least make sure he didn't forget this moment. "Sorry kid," he whispered, his voice not carrying out of the confines of his armor. His plasma pistol came from his hip and leveled on the vat. "If I see you on the other side, drinks are on me."

He fired.

Raw, seething fury boiled in Shepard's chest as he beheld his handiwork, an unsurprising herald to the flickers of purple light flashing through his gaze. His hand shook with barely-suppressed emotion and it took him three tries to get his pistol to stay holstered. His gaze never left the grisly aftermath of his efforts though, forever imprinting it on his memory. He stood there in silence, determined to ensure he would never forget the price the Reapers exacted. Saren was going to pay for this, in blood and pain. He would make sure of it.

The others seemed to share his mood, for they went about their work in silence. Shepard was grateful for the reprieve, and he used every ounce of his meditation practice to get his turbulent emotions back under control. It wasn't nearly as effective as it should have been, but it was enough that he was mostly calm when Nihlus' voice rang out.

"Commander," he called over his shoulder, his voice both shocked and excited. "You need to see this."

Shepard blew out a breath and forced himself to talk normally as he made his way to the turian. "See what?"

The Spectre flashed him a grin and pushed a button on the console. A large section of the wall to the right of the console broke from the rest of the wall and slid up into the ceiling, filling the room with a gentle green glow. In the newly-revealed cubby stood a shallow ramp approximately two feet wide and three tall. From the center of the ramp, an oblong cylinder, more almond-shaped than round, stretched an easy eight feet into the air. Shepard recognized it instantly, even with the green streamers wafting around it.

"What the hell is a Prothean beacon doing here?"

"The computer says that Saren found it on Garvug, in the Valhallan Threshold, and had it brought here. Apparently, you didn't let him finish on Eden Prime, and he only had half the information he needed. This beacon let him fill in the blanks." Nihlus' eyes rapidly flicked over the display before him. "According to his notes, he has all the information, but he has been struggling to understand it. Even with the Cipher, it confuses him."

"Is there a copy of it anywhere?"

Nihlus was silent for a long moment as he rifled through the system's files. "Not that I can find." He glanced over at Shepard. "What do you want to do?"

"What else can we do?" Shepard asked with a shrug. "Get it from the source."

The commander stepped over to the beacon, only to pause briefly as a holographic display came to life the instant he stepped within arm's reach. Fancy, he thought to himself. One hand reached out and touched the hologram, and in a flash of green light, the lab disappeared.

Images, thoughts, _memories_ not his own raced through his mind in a blindingly-fast, ever-changing rush. Sensations he had no words for, colors he could not see, people both achingly familiar and mind-shatteringly alien poured into his consciousness like a stream, stamping whole new concepts directly into his brain, then whisking them away just as suddenly.

Men and women he recognized of an unknown species slaughtered by the hundreds by a numberless horde of mutant, deformed versions of same. A silver, wingless bird floating in the sky like a cloud. Cybernetics being forcibly grafted onto a screaming child. Echoing cries of pain and horror in a language he didn't know, but understood anyway. Nazara, and hundreds, thousands of others just like it descending out of the sky. A ring with five broad outward spokes. A single eye, an enormous red orb, glaring with hellish light. A planet, broken and dead as it drifted around a dying star.

And many more besides. Confused, nonsensical alien thoughts surged through his mind in a tidal wave that he had no hope of comprehending. None of the techniques, the psionic tricks, he had picked up from c-psis and basic were even noticed by this invasion of his very self. He couldn't fight it. He could only weather the storm, stubbornly railing against it. Phenomenal force of will kept him surfaced above the tide of memories, anchored him before it could swallow him whole.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the memories abruptly stopped and Shepard fell to his knees. That... hurt. He shook his head and forced himself back to his feet, shrugging off Garrus' and Ashley's concerned hands as he went. The turian made to speak, but before he could, a hologram appeared over the console. A blazing red outline of a shape he would now never forget. Blunt, jointed limbs jutted from a harshly oblong body, in some kind of demented cross between a squid and a cuttlefish. It lacked anything that could pass for eyes, but Shepard knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it saw everything. His eyes narrowed angrily. Nazara...

"You are not Saren," the Reaper's voice rang through the room in a low, basso rumble that Shepard could feel in his bones. With that statement alone, the commander simply _knew_ that he had been weighed, he had been measured, and he had been found wanting. His every instinct, and everything he had just experienced, begged him to flee from this thing. He knew, on every level, that its attention meant certain death. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to curl up in the corner and hide until it went away.

And it pissed him off. Anger, hot and heavy, burst to life in his chest and beat a low, seething tempo through his veins. It surged through him in a searing wave, driving the raw, primal terror back into the far recesses of his mind, where it belonged. He embraced it eagerly. Anger was familiar, almost comforting compared to the fear. He fixed a furious glare on the hologram and spoke with scathing sarcasm. "Gee, what gave it away?"

Garrus snorted a brief chuckle and joined in. "I told you they'd see through our clever disguises, Commander."

"Insignificant creatures," the voice rumbled again, its pitch never wavering as it steadfastly ignored their jibes. The hologram pulsed in flares of red in time with its voice, an angry beat that seared the message directly into Shepard's brain. "You stand before your inevitable doom. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign."

"You're a melodramatic idiot," Shepard said in a growl. His hands unconsciously balled themselves into tight fists at his sides. "We know. You're one of the Reapers."

"Reapers?" it asked. Its focus settled like a lead blanket atop Shepard's shoulders. "As fitting a title as any. In the end, what you choose to call us is irrelevant. Your extinction is inevitable."

Shepard couldn't help but swallow heavily. That was intimidating. For that one instant, he fully and honestly believed that this thing was going to beat him. He stilled, remembering a child who would never get the chance to live, and his thoughts went incandescent with rage. It may kill him, it may grind him into dust, it may even succeed in its goal. But it would not beat him. Surrender was not an option. Ever. Not to this thing. His fury sounded loud in his ears, echoing deafeningly with each beat of his heart. "You aren't the first to try, jackass. The Ethereals caught us by surprise and we still kicked their ass." He bared his teeth angrily. "We're ready for you. I'm going to enjoy watching you die."

"Your kind are an anomaly. An aberration." Sovereign's voice held a hint of something Shepard could not define. "Yet still you suffer from the frailties of blood and flesh. You wither and die." It paused briefly, as if savoring the thought. "We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are _nothing_. We are the end of everything."

"Bullshit," Shepard countered heatedly. Fear could no longer touch him through the waves of righteous anger flowing through him. He could barely string three thoughts together through the fury coating his thoughts, and it was only a monumental effort of will that kept him from mindlessly attacking the goddamn hologram. But still, he persevered. He wasn't going to give this thing _anything_, not even his self-control. With a deep, steadying breath, he sent a pointed look at the people around him. "You're either lying, or you're not very good at your job." He grinned ferally. "From where I stand, we don't have much to worry about."

"Confidence born of ignorance. The Cycle cannot be broken."

"Cycle?" Nihlus interjected. His voice shown with confusion and outrage. "What Cycle?"

"The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished." The words hung ominously in the air. The surety of purpose in the Reaper's voice broke through the hot fury and chilled Shepard to the bone. "The Protheans were not the first. They did not build the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They merely found them. The legacy of my kind."

"Why?" Nihlus pressed urgently. "Why build them and leave it all behind?"

"Organic minds are weak. Easily manipulated. Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. By providing it, we impose order on the chaos of organic evolution."

"Fucking called it!" Ashley blurted out suddenly. "What?" she asked defensively when the entire room turned to stare at her. "We did! We totally knew it was a trap!"

"Irrelevant. Your worlds will burn. Your people will die. It is inevitable." The sheer confidence with which Sovereign spoke was overwhelming. Some small part of Shepard was freaking out at this revelation and screaming in the back of his mind that these things must have been the Ethereals' enemy, but he only distantly noticed. He was far more occupied with glaring daggers at the hologram.

"You..." he growled helplessly, unable to properly articulate his fury. His shoulders shook with repressed rage and it was taking everything he had not to simply let go and smash the damn thing.

Fortunately, the gunnery chief retained enough presence of mind to speak. "Oh man, you have to hate us."

"Your kind are the last, desperate gamble of a dying race. You will be eradicated."

"Keep talking, sectoid," she countered instantly. "And we'll see what robo-calamari tastes like."

"You exist because we allow it," Sovereign rejoined. There was no room for doubt or alternatives in that statement. "And you will end because we demand it."

"What the hell do you want with us?" Shepard demanded, plowing right over Ashley's indignant retort. His voice trembled slightly in a potent mix of fear and anger.

"I want you to die." The calm, simple statement of fact shook Shepard to the core, far more than any more grandiose statement of purpose ever could.

Shepard's eyes flashed and a corona of psionic energy flared around his head. Righteous indignation surged alongside primal rage within him, meshing together into a tranquil fury he had never before experienced. His thoughts were simultaneously disjointed and strikingly clear. At once, muddied by rage but consumed with furious purpose. His mind burned with a frozen fire that demanded one thing and one thing only. He swore to himself, then and there, that no matter what it took, the Reapers were going to die. Every last one of them. When he spoke, it was low, barely above a whisper, and full of deadly promise. "You want to kill us? Fine. Give it your best shot. But know this. We will fight you, we will learn from you, and in the end, we will kill you."

"Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction. This exchange is over." The hologram winked out, and the room exploded.

* * *

"-nder!" The insistent, achingly familiar voice swam through the murky, disjointed haze of Shepard's thoughts as he slowly and painfully regained consciousness. One eye cracked open to find blurry shapes, most a blaring red, dancing in the air before him. A small voice in the back of his mind insisted the shapes were important, and so he tried to focus, tried to understand them. He clawed around through the swamp his mind had become and reached for their meaning, only to lose his grip and slide back into the numb chaos as the voice continued. "Come on, talk to me!"

"Uggh," a new voice moaned painfully from nearby. Shepard tried to look for the source, but his body made a small, uncontrolled spasm in the sudden surge of dizziness the motion provoked. He stopped fighting it and just listened for now. "Joker?"

"Chief! Thank god," the first voice answered, the speaker's relief clear in their tone. "Your suit readings went haywire. The hell's going on?"

The second voice grunted and Shepard could hear distant scuffling sounds punctuated with soft cursing. "Found a thing. Talked to whatsisface. Thing exploded."

"Riiight," the first voice, Joker, Shepard's mind finally provided, drawled back. "Helpful. Well, whatever you did, you might want to wrap it up in there. Nazara's headed your way, and he's coming fast."

"Great," a third voice sarcastically drawled, even as the speaker, a blurry blue and grey turian, appeared in Shepard's vision. He knelt down, bringing the various nicks, tears, and soot scarring of his armor into focus, and said, "You alright, Shepard?"

He mumbled something that might have once been a response and the turian rocked back, looking to something beyond Shepard's view. A helmeted woman appeared from that direction and he frowned fiercely at her. He knew her name. He knew he did. So why couldn't he remember it? Was it Amy? Anna? Ashley! he realized with something approaching a giggle, moments before a soft click sounded. One hand came down toward his face, pulling his eyes inward as they followed it until another surge of dizziness and pain forced him to quit. A second later, the hand pulled away, taking the blaring shapes with it. Air, fresh and damp, gently caressed his face while the turian held his head off the ground and the smooth pressure against the back of his head disappeared. Cold, armored fingers ran firmly and quickly, but gently, through his hair until, with a low curse, they traced a large knot toward the base of his skull. "He's got a concussion," Ashley said to the turian, even as she took her hands from him and fiddled with something on her belt that Shepard couldn't see.

"Not surprised," the tur- _Garrus_ replied. "He was right in front of the thing when it exploded. Can he move?"

Shepard's eyes flicked from Ashley over to the turian and he scowled blankly at him. He wasn't entirely sure _why_ he needed to move, but Garrus was doubting him, and he didn't like it. He'd have to pro- _Hello!_

His train of thought was derailed by a sudden spike of pain from his neck followed by a cold, icy sensation that rushed down his spine and up into his brain. Sharp, violent shivers followed in its wake, driving away the murky fog over his thoughts and replacing it with a soft, brittle kind of clarity that he somehow instinctively knew would shatter at the slightest provocation. The eerie, half-painful sensation of the needle sliding back out of his neck pulled his gaze up to Ashley and he scowled questioningly at her.

"Stimulant and painkiller cocktail," she answered the unvoiced question. "You're still rocking a concussion, but it'll get you moving. For a few minutes, at least. C'mon."

She stood and offered a hand down to help him up, which he grasped firmly and let her pull him to his feet. "Thanks," he said, stronger than a mumble, but not by much. His head swam slightly as he let go and tried to balance himself, but he remained standing. "Little warning next time though, alright?"

"You're the boss," Ashley said with a shrug. She offered him his helmet and he took it, scowling at the small splash of blood on the inside of the back plate. His free hand unconsciously rose to probe at the goose egg forming on the back of his head and came away dotted with blood. Wonderful.

He nodded his thanks slowly, careful not to jar his head too quickly, and forced down his scowl. He glanced around briefly and called out, "You alright, Nihlus?"

"Yes, Commander," the Spectre said calmly from right beside him, prompting him to whirl around and nearly fall over. His helmetless head thunked into his armored hand as he groaned in pained discomfort.

"Good," he mumbled into his palm. Opening one eye, he cast about looking for clues as he asked, "What the hell happened?"

"After Nazara, or Sovereign, or whatever its name is finished chatting, the Prothean beacon exploded," Garrus answered from his side, waving one taloned hand at the ruined mess of electronics in the cubby near the wall. "Probably a booby trap for just this occasion. You took the worst of it, but it knocked us all on our ass."

"And alerted Nazara that we are here," Nihlus continued. "We need to rejoin the others, prime the bomb, and get out before he can arrive."

Shepard nodded gingerly and looked around the room. Everything of value had been destroyed, the computer, the beacon, even the indoctrination machines looked damaged, if not quite completely ruined. He sighed. So much for leads. "Let's go then," he said and turned toward the exit. His steps wavered slightly, but he managed to at least walk straight as the others fell in around him. As he went, a small smile spread across his lips. Despite the loss of intel, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had still come out ahead.

* * *

"How long on the bomb?" the question rolled off Shepard's lips the instant he burst through the doors back into the control room. A small area in the middle of the room had been cleared of tables to make room for the three foot high pile of complicated electronics and baleful blue glows that was all that was left of the Kirrahe's ship's drive core. Tali knelt beside it, her hands blurring all around it as she worked to coax the anti-matter reactor to readiness. A few feet behind her, Legion held his sniper rifle steadily on the door, but swiftly averted it as the commander came through.

"Three minutes, maybe four," the quarian called over her shoulder, not looking up from her work. One hand, brightly clad in her omnitool, ran over the light brown lid that gave the core it's distinctive mushroom-like appearance. A low hiss rang out as a collection of cylinders at the base of the mushroom unfolded outward and bumped against a steel bar that encircled the base a few inches below the lid. "It's prepping the initiator now. Once done, it can't be stopped, and we'll only have thirty seconds to leave before it blows."

Shepard scowled. "You've got half that," he said, trying to press on her the urgency of the situation. "Nazara already knows we're here and the geth are probably already on their way.."

"I'm working as fast as I can," she snapped back, her voice tight and full of restrained tension, and despite her words, her movements abruptly became far quicker and less smooth. "Now please, let me concentrate on setting up the twenty kiloton explosive we're all _standing right next to_."

"Alright, alright," Shepard capitulated quietly and stepped back, cringing as the half-shriek she finished in seemed to drive shards of glass into his ears. His thrice-damned concussion made it too hard to focus to argue with someone so clearly under immense pressure. He looked over to the others. "Garrus, Legion, see what you can do to help her. Everybody else, settle in and be ready for anything."

Murmurs of assent spread through the room and the free members of the squad took up positions in and around the doorway, fortifying it against geth assault. A tense silence settled over the room, broken only by the quiet mutters of the crew guiding the bomb to its rightful place. One by one, the seconds ticked by at an agonizingly slow pace. Each one seemed to stretch on for hours in the brittle, medicated clarity of Shepard's thoughts. With each booming beat of his heart, his vision wobbled unsteadily, but iron will and a desk-cum-tripod kept his plasma sniper trained on the door.

Suddenly, a flurry of motion erupted behind him and Legion's voice broke the suffocating silence. "Shepard-Commander, I have intercepted heretic communications indicating combat platforms are following our path through the facility. They will arrive in approximately forty seconds."

"Too soon!" Tali cried. "We need another minute past that!"

The wave of adrenaline that comment generated shot through Shepard in a rush, temporarily driving out the cloying murk over his thoughts and replacing it with a low thrumming pain right behind his eyes. "Fuck," he swore under his breath. His mouth opened to start barking orders when Nihlus broke from the door they had been guarding and sprinted past him. "Wha?"

"I've got it covered," Nihlus said over his shoulder as he reached the door to the ogre production plant.

Shepard nodded and made to follow, only to draw up short as even the adrenaline rush he was riding couldn't fully suppress the nausea that move generated. He groaned uneasily, but pushed the feeling aside as Nihlus unlocked the door. "Ashley, go with him. Me and Garrus'll guard here."

"Ri-" the gunnery chief began, only to be cut off by the Spectre pointedly shaking his head.

"For this kind of thing, I work better alone," he said ruefully.

"Oh fuck no," Shepard shot back. "You're not going to play martyr here. You're taking backup."

"Martyr?" Nihlus asked, his voice honestly confused. "I'm not going to die here, Commander. I'm just going to stop them. Besides," his voice trailed off as he hit the switch to open the door. Loud echoes of furious combat, angry roars and the kind of chaos only possible by several dozen ogres mindlessly tearing each other apart came through the new opening. Nihlus waved a hand in their general direction. "I've already got backup."

Shepard's lips quirked as Nihlus' plan became clear to him. He chuckled lowly, ignoring the brief spikes of dizziness and pain the act caused. "I like the way you think," he said, pushing himself to his feet and offering a hand to the Spectre. "Good luck. Don't get trapped between 'em, alright?"

"They won't see it coming." Nihlus took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake as his mandibles flared into a predatory smile. "See you back on the _Normandy_." The Spectre turned and rushed through the door without another word, ignoring Ashley's indignant cries as it sealed behind him.

Shepard snorted quietly, prompting the gunnery chief to whirl on him. "The hell's so funny, sir?" she asked coldly.

"Calm down, Chief," he said, turning a steady gaze on her. "If he's planning what I think he is, he'll be fine. I'm just surprised I couldn't hear any clanging when he ran off."

"Clanging?" Garrus asked uncertainly. "Why would you expect that?"

"Because with brass balls that huge, there's no way they wouldn't bounce off each other." Shepard shook his head with an amused smirk at Garrus' baffled expression. "Human idiom, don't worry about it. It means he's an audacious sectoid-fucker."

"What part of that was audacious?" Ashley asked skeptically.

"The part where he's planning to sic Nazara's pets on its minions."

* * *

Nihlus was cautiously optimistic as he snuck a look over the pile of twisted wreckage and tumorous dead-or-dying flesh that hid him from the score of ogres viciously tearing into each other beyond. During his mad dash through the ruin that had once been a cloning lab, he had had plenty of time to run through his rushed and haphazard plan and turn it into something almost workable, which was a major improvement from some of the other schemes he had concocted before. He just hoped his assumptions and guesses proved correct, or this may turn out to be the least successful holding action in galactic history. He shook his head firmly; now was not the time to be distracted. There was work to be done.

One talon yanked a magnesium grenade from his belt and flicked it in a low arc up and over his cover. The ogres didn't seem to notice the fist-sized cylinder at first, for the sounds of furious combat didn't even falter, but that would not last long. A beat later, the grenade detonated with a blinding flash and deafening bang, casting the whole room into brilliant white and stark, glaring shadows that, even from behind cover and facing the opposite direction, stabbed through Nihlus' closed eyelids like shards of broken glass. The wave of sound that followed was thankfully curtailed by his armor but still left his ears ringing uncomfortably. Long years of training and experience forced aside the discomfort though, and he immediately moved on to the next stage of his plan.

The Spectre clambered atop his cover in a single smooth motion, leaving him clearly silhouetted against the distant lights of the cloning plant. From this new position, the whole area around him was visible, including the mostly-cleared area created by nearly a half hour of continuous reckless combat. He cast an eye over the assembled ogres and realized with a mix of relief and dread that the grenade had achieved exactly what he had wanted. It grabbed the attention of twenty crazed, unstoppable, and unthinking berserkers and united them against a common foe.

Him.

His mandibles twitched into something halfway between a grimace and an adrenaline-fueled grin as the ogres bellowed at each other in a deafening crescendo of mindless rage. In the same instant, his alloy cannon roared in challenge, spearing the nearest of the creatures in the back with a storm of flechettes and painted the ground with gouts of thick orange blood. "Come, freaks!" the Spectre shouted when the ogres whirled on him as one. "Face me and die!"

The reaction was instantaneous. Raw, watery eyes glared hatefully at Nihlus and, as one, the ogres charged him in a deadly living tide. Berserk, wordless screams echoed off the walls in a deafening cacophony punctuated by the crunch and thud of ogres tearing through whatever was in their path. Broken machinery and twisted flesh alike were flung through the air or trampled under the heel of the berserk mutants as they threw themselves heedlessly at Nihlus without the slightest regard for anything else.

Primal terror welled up in the Spectre, pouring out of that low, instinctive portion of his brain in a surging torrent, only to smash against the iron walls of discipline a lifetime of service and duty had instilled in him. He stared down their charge unflinchingly and his alloy cannon roared twice more, each time at a fresh target, stoking the flames of their bloodlust into a towering inferno. He watched with visceral satisfaction as his chosen targets gave voice to their rage and refused to slow, utterly ignoring the gaping wounds torn in their flesh. If anything, the wounds seemed to spur them on, driving the group even deeper into bloodthirsty madness. Spittle flew from twenty mouths as they charged even faster, closing the distance almost before he could react.

Almost was all a Spectre needed however. As the nearest ogre drew near, one taloned hand slapped at the control on his belt. The distinctive blue of mass effect fields flared out of Nihlus' armor in a bright corona and threw dancing shadows around the room as element zero warped the very fabric of space and time in order to drastically reduce his mass. The strange, floaty feeling of weighing practically nothing settled over him in a fraction of a second, exaggerating every one of his movements, and seemingly the strength behind them.

A quick flex of his legs was all it took to fling him through the air, easily as high as four meters above the ground. A deep, primitive part of him, the part of his ancestry that had never truly left the skies, relished in the sensation of soaring gracefully through the air, of throwing oneself into the talons of the spirits, of no longer being confined to the static earth. Nothing could compare with it, and in that instant, Nihlus was endlessly grateful to the humans for concocting this ridiculously useful extravagance.

Behind him, the wreckage he had started from exploded outward under the colossal force of two ogres moving at a dead sprint. Jagged shards of twisted and broken metal were thrown through the air and metal and plastic alike were crushed underfoot with each step of the colossal juggernauts as time and again they went _through_ every obstacle in their path. Nihlus smirked as he hit the ground amid the howls of the mutant creatures chasing him. Perfect.

The Spectre whirled and bolted for the entrance in an ungainly stride that, thanks to the mass effect module, was more a series of incredibly long, rapid hops than an actual run. It was a bizarre method of locomotion, but it made his avian instincts sing. It was the closest he had ever come to unaided flight. He couldn't help the low, trilling laugh that tore out of him as he went. Despite the danger, despite the ravenous horde of bloodthirsty mutant savages, his heart beat a rapid tempo of unadulterated glee. It felt so _good_. Why had he never done this before?

Still, he had a job to do. And that knowledge clamped down on his exultation like a vice, strangling the laughter in his throat. With the echoes of the ogres' unstoppable charge behind him, he wove over and around the wreckage of the cloning plant leading them unerringly toward his destination; the geth's inevitable entrance. The synthetics had no idea what they were in for.

* * *

Nihlus burst out of the corridor and into the holding cells mere meters ahead of the pack of ogres, internally cursing at the glacially slow drain of the static build up in his mass effect module. He had been forced to drop it only moments after getting out of the cloning plant, and it still was not yet done venting. The geth needed to appear, now, or he would not survive long enough to enact his plan.

As if in response to his thoughts, the far door of the cavernous room burst open and disgorged a veritable stream of geth troopers led by a handful of destroyers. Nihlus blew out a relieved breath at the sight. Thank the spirits. Now he only needed to not fail. No pressure, right?

With a mirthless, breathless chuckle, Nihlus tore a smoke grenade from his belt and armed it, tightly gripping the lever and keeping it primed with one talon even while his other arm raised his riot shield before him. In the same heartbeat, the geth opened fire. A torrent of bullets pinged off the shield, growing more and more accurate as he drew closer.

Suddenly, the _exact_ instant he closed to within ten meters of the leading destroyers, twin waves of fire splashed against his shield. Though the dancing flames, Nihlus could see two of the destroyers pouring thick streams of blazing napalm out of the tanks on their backs and toward him. In the span of a heartbeat, the inside of the enclosed space turned into an oven, filling the air with flames and dancing mirages. The heat surged, creating convection currents that fed the flames in an endless recursion and dragged the room down into hell.

The Spectre flinched at the sudden eruption, instinctively releasing the smoke grenade as he threw himself away from the fire. The small object, his only hope of getting out alive, tumbled into the heart of the firestorm and burst, throwing a massive gout of thick, blinding smoke into the air.

Nihlus cursed quietly as he realized less than half of the grenade's contents had actually turned to smoke, and the parts that did did not spread nearly as well as it should have, but he had no time to dwell on it. The semi-transparent haze he stood in, stirred by the powerful winds, could not possibly provide enough cover from either side to pull off his next move. A quick glance around showed him there was only one place that did.

With a soft murmur of thanks to the long-dead Dr. Vahlen, original designer of the Titan Armor system he wore, Nihlus threw himself headlong into the heart of the flames. Smoke and fire filled his vision, thrown into chaotic patterns by the winds and the bullets that chased him. The roar of the inferno drowned out all other sounds, even the furious cries of the ogres _so damn close_ behind him. There was only one thing left to do now. Get out. And there was only one way to do that.

He braced himself for pain and, without giving himself time to think about it, overrode the safety limiters on his mass effect module, praying silently that it had drained enough for what he needed to do. Fortunately, the deep blue of dark energy burst out of his form, giving a strong contrast to the yellow-white of the flames and the glaring red of the overload warning on his hud. An instant later, Nihlus threw himself into the air.

Thanks to the mass effect, the Spectre catapulted into the air as if he had been fired out of a cannon. Wind buffeted him and smoke filled his vision as he careened through space until one talon lashed out and grabbed the railing of one of the upper-level walkways. He grunted in pain as his momentum nearly pulled his arm out of its socket, but thankfully it, and his grip, held and, with a deft motion to deactivate the eezo module, dropped him heavily to the walkway beyond.

He hit with a clang that was lost amid the roars of gunfire and bellows of the ogres as the creatures charged through the space he had been and carried on, straight into a solid wall of geth. He chuckled lowly as he rose to his feet, almost gleeful at every scene he could make out through the thick smoke. His plan had worked beautifully. Every missed shot the geth made at him had flown into the crowd of ogres and whipped the things into an even bigger frenzy. And once he had disappeared, the berserkers had only one outlet left.

Geth died in droves, torn apart under the berserk fury of their nominal attack dogs. It was a fitting irony. Nihlus shook his head with a small grin and glanced at the timer on his hud. Just under a minute until detonation, he noted with a nod. Good timing.

He crawled away, moving low and fast as he searched for a spot that wouldn't be immediately visible when he portaled out. He had only taken a few steps though when the roof erupted inward under the explosive power of a baleful red beam.

The beam, moving almost too fast to follow, slammed into the ground in the heart of the cluster of ogres where it violently exploded. The creatures were scattered like leaves in a hurricane, tossed about by the tremendous force of whatever it was that had been brought to bear. Instinctively, Nihlus ducked into cover behind the railing then traced the source of the beam back through the new hole in the roof.

What he saw filled him with dread.

Looming overhead like an obscene specter of death was Nazara, bizarre tentacles weaving obscure patterns through the air. The Reaper hovered just over the facility, no more than thirty meters above the ground, as if the planet's gravity well, the forces that would literally collapse a Citadel dreadnought under its own weight, meant nothing. He had heard the reports from Eden Prime, seen the videos of this craft do exactly this once before, but a video could no more compare to this than a mass effect pistol could compare to his alloy cannon. He had known intellectually that the Reapers were horrifically advanced foes, but this, this made him _feel_ it.

Then it happened. A sound? No, sound was too simple a word. A scream, an all-consuming, soul-piercing, bone-rattling, _terrifying _scream filled the air, cutting through the sounds of battle below him like a plasma torch through cloth. The room went _silent_. Even the ogres stilled, cowed by the presence of something infinitely their greater.

Nihlus could not move. He could barely breathe. A small voice in the back of his mind spoke, a weak, tremulous, traitorous thought he desperately tried to crush the instant he realized he had had it. Despite his best efforts though, he knew the truth. Knew it with the same certainty he knew his own name. Nazara had spoken true. The Reapers could not be beaten.

"Well done," an amused, smooth, charismatic, and _turian _voice rang out in the ensuing silence, heralding Saren's appearance on a floating disc as it descended through the hole. The rogue Spectre glanced around before his eyes fell on Nihlus and he smiled. Flesh and cybernetics alike contorted with the expression, but there was none of the warmth, joy, the _life_ usually associated with it. "Ah Nihlus, I should have known. You always were an apt pupil. But no matter, I can't let you run free any longer. You can't possibly understand what's at stake."

"Saren..." Nihlus muttered loudly, resigned acceptance heavy in his voice. He levelled his alloy cannon and stared mournfully at his former mentor, desperately looking for some sign that this was all a ploy. Even now, against all the evidence and logic, he wanted to believe the best of the turian. "Why Saren?" he demanded, his hand fighting with itself to pull the spirits-damned trigger already. "Why are you doing this?!"

"I have seen what the Reapers are capable of," Saren said heatedly, his voice heavy with passion, frustrated anger, and a thick undercurrent of fear. "They cannot be stopped. Fighting them is futile, it can only end in death. I will _not_ sacrifice everything for the sake of petty freedom."

"Freedom?" Nihlus shot back incredulously. "They're going to kill us! Just look at the Protheans!"

"The Protheans tried to fight," Saren said dismissively. He shook his head and his voice grew more and more impassioned as he spoke. "They rose up against their conquerors and paid the price for it. Trillions dead, an entire civilization wiped out. We do not need to follow their path! If they had simply bowed before the invaders, the Protheans would still exist! What use is freedom when the alternative is death? Is submission not preferable to extinction?"

Nihlus' mouth worked briefly but no sound came out. He could not think of a suitable counter, and his mind churned to a stop on one undeniable fact. Did he himself not realize exactly this only seconds ago? The Reapers could not be stopped. Would it not be better for _some_ to live, no matter how reduced? At least they'd be alive!

A new, familiar-yet-not voice broke into his thoughts then. "Nihlus! Bomb is past the point of no return," it said urgently. "You've got thirty seconds. Call in a portal!"

Nihlus blinked stupidly. Who wa- Shepard! He realized in a rush, his thoughts sluggishly churning into overdrive. How did he not recognize Shepard?

Nihlus felt a chill as he realized the only possible answer to that question. Indoctrination. Nazara was already in his head, twisting his thoughts, altering his perceptions. No wonder Saren was worried enough about it to construct this facility. And there was no way he had been near Nazara for so long and emerged unharmed. He was already gone.

And if the Reapers won, it would happen to every living thing in the galaxy.

Every fiber of Nihlus' being rebelled at the thought. This twisted caricature was all that remained of a being he had once respected above all others. He refused to let that happen to anyone else. It did not matter if he could win. It did not matter what they could do to him. The possibility of failure never entered his thoughts. All that mattered was that he was going to fight until his dying breath.

His alloy cannon roared as his finger tightened, spitting a stream of vahlenite flechettes screaming toward Saren. A kinetic barrier flared to life around the rogue Spectre's platform, batting aside the projectiles with contemptuous ease in a swirl of dark energy. Saren frowned without moving.

"I see. I had hoped you would join me," he said emotionlessly, seizing the initiative while Nihlus hastily tried to figure out what in the spirits' name just happened. "_I_ am needed to find the Conduit, but together, together we could have proven the worth of _all_ organics to Sovereign. Could have earned our people a reprieve from the inevitable slaughter." He shook his head. "But no. You would undo my work. You would doom our entire civilization. I am sorry Nihlus, but for that, you must die."

Saren pulled a gun from his back and pointed it at Nihlus, unleashing a torrent of lead at him. Shot after shot bounced off the riot shield he held aloft as Saren expertly tracked the dodging and weaving Spectre.

It couldn't last forever though, and his shield failed right as Shepard's voice came back over the comm. "Ten seconds Nihlus. Call in a fucking portal!"

At the same instant, Saren broke off his attack. Without another word, the platform turned away and sped toward the hole in the roof at full throttle. Somehow, Saren knew about the bomb and was fleeing to the only bolthole that might survive what was to come: Nazara.

"Heh," the turian chuckled grimly as his decision was made. Saren had said it himself, he was needed to find the Conduit. Stopping that was worth Nihlus' life. And he owed too much to Saren to leave the turian like this. "Sorry Commander, it looks like I lied."

Sulphurous swearing came back at him, along with explicit orders to send his coordinates, until it was abruptly silenced as he turned off the comm. Shepard never did like not getting his way. He'd just have to deal with it.

Without pause, Nihlus activated his mass effect module and threw himself into the longest, and most important, tackle of his entire life. He soared gracefully through the air, relishing the feeling of flight, even with the warnings blaring across his hud. He twisted the talon still on the control of his eezo module, reversing the polarity in mid-air.

Saren's eyes went wide as a brightly glowing Nihlus flew out of the smoke and slammed into his chest. The thousands of pounds of force imparted by the impact sent both of them careening off the edge of the platform and threw the platform itself into a chaotic tumble.

"What are you doing?!" Saren demanded, raining blows on his old student in a desperate bid to loosen the turian's death grip on his waist. The words were barely audible over the roaring wind as they fell.

Nihlus smiled grimly, half resigned and half determined. "What you would have wanted me to do," he said.

Saren's eyes went wide.

They hit the ground.

The world went white.

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Prime  
June 2183  
**_This unit, which we are calling 'Prime', serves a vital role in geth infantry operations. Specifically, that of battlefield commander. To that end, the platform is both heavily protected and incredibly dangerous. Standing half a meter taller and 200 kilograms heavier than even the Destroyer platforms, this unit is unquestionably the most physically impressive of the bipedal Geth platforms. Armor plating substantially thicker than that employed by any other infantry platform, almost on par with that used in the Armature platform, covers nearly every square inch of it, rendering it highly resistant to small arms fire. To compensate for the increased weight, the unit also possesses a substantially improved musculature. This combined with its reportedly high levels of skill makes it incredibly dangerous in close quarters combat._

_In addition to the physical aspects, this unit also possesses an internal system unlike anything we have ever seen before. The computational architecture within it is remarkably complex, far more so than we had theorized was even possible in a mobile unit. As such, it is able to carry an order of magnitude more geth programs than all previously encountered platforms, even the Mystic. This abundance of programs allows the platform to operate on a much higher level than the barely-sapient Troopers and fulfill their role in coordinating geth forces on the battlefield. We believe that, with study, we can harness this architecture for our own SHIV units, vastly increasing their operational capacity and combat effectiveness._

_The most interesting aspect of this unit however, is the other service its unique internal architecture allows it to perform. Namely, that of a geth hub. Through the antennae extending from their shoulders, each Prime unit is able to extend its own internal network to include that of other geth platforms within range. This has the unfortunate side effect of vastly improving the processing capacity, intelligence, and operational skills of every platform so affected. It is not an exaggeration to say that a single Prime is able to increase the combat effectiveness of a group of geth by as much as forty percent. We recommend that Prime units be labelled as priority targets wherever they are encountered on the battlefield._

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Dragonlance  
June 2183  
**_A truly startling piece of technological innovation, this rifle appears to be at or near the peak of mass effect based anti-armor weaponry. The projectile is so hot and so powerfully penetrative that to many, the initial assumption is a laser weapon of some description. That could not be further from the truth however. It achieves its immense penetrative ability by firing streams of ferrofluid at extreme speeds, well beyond anything possible without the mass effect. The speed and force it carries, combined with the incompressible nature of the fluid, causes it to behave much like a waterjet cutter and allows it to tear through the strongest known materials in the galaxy nearly instantly._

_Work has already begun on both bettering our protection against this weapon and claiming it for our own. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide a time or functionality estimate on the necessary armor changes at this time. However, through careful study and testing, we have already managed to create a crude prototype of this weapon with our own materials. Further refinements are currently in progress, including scaling it down to a size comfortably usable by our personnel in the field, and we expect it to enter production in no more than two months. _

**RESEARCH REPORT  
Codename: Singularity Cannon  
June 2183  
**_If the Dragonlance is the peak of mass effect based anti-armor weaponry, this weapon is the ultimate expression of the field's heavy weaponry. When activated, this weapon expels a handful of small particles then surrounds them with a supercharged positive mass effect field. This mass effect field elevates their mass near-infinitely, creating a gravitational singularity of immense power. Whatever the singularity comes into contact with, as well as practically all matter within a large radius, is consumed rapidly, further strengthening the gravitational forces. The singularity becomes an exponentially increasing threat that can theoretically consume a planet in a matter of minutes._

_Fortunately, the mass effect field powering this singularity is incapable of sustaining itself for longer than two seconds. It is a dangerous and deadly weapon, but unless there are dramatic, and potentially impossible, improvements to remote manipulation of mass effect fields, it's possible applications are limited to infantry-scale combat. To that effect, we are pursuing ways to improve its effectiveness for our troops. In time, we believe we can integrate Blaster Launcher guidance packages into this weapon to create our single most dangerous infantry weapon to date._


	24. Moving On

**Chapter 23: Moving On**

Shepard blew out a low, fortifying breath and with an act of will forced his hand to finish its journey to the button that would connect the _Normandy_'s comm room to the Citadel Council. A soft chime announced the sending of the signal and Shepard used the last few seconds before he had to face the music to finish composing himself. He hated this part of his job, and lately he had been doing it far too often. At least this time it wouldn't be bereaved family members that he had to deal with. He just wish he knew what Nihlus' death was going to do to relations with the Citadel.

He shook his head with a scowl. Why couldn't the stubborn bastard have made his life easy for once? All it would have taken was not killing himself. Was that really so hard? Intellectually, he recognized that Nihlus did everything he could, and Saren was truly the one to blame, but god damnit, losing people under his command always made him so fucking mad. Nihlus could have lived if the idiot had just obeyed and called in a fucking portal.

A second chime intruded into his increasingly angry thoughts then and Shepard ran through a quick meditative exercise. Going into this conversation angry would only make it harder. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, just in time for the connection with the Citadel Council to finish forming. "Councillors," he greeted curtly.

"Commander Shepard," Councillor Sparatus said with a nod, and the greeting was echoed by his compatriots. "I take it your mission was a success?" The hologram blinked once and his mandibles curled into a frown. When he spoke, his voice was both resigned and cautious. "Where is Nihlus?"

"It was," Shepard said evenly and steadily met the turian Councillor's gaze. He shook his head minutely and noted the glimmer of realization in Sparatus' eyes. "But Nihlus won't be joining us. He never made it off Virmire."

Nearly in unison, the Councillors muttered various exclamations, but at the same time nodded in acknowledgment, as if they had expected it. Which they probably were, Shepard admitted to himself. The fact that he wasn't standing here meant only two things, injury or death. And this couldn't possibly be the first time a Spectre was flagged KIA.

Tevos cleared her throat to grab Shepard's attention and said, her voice neutral, "That is... unfortunate. Thank you for informing us. How did it happen?"

The commander took a deep breath and told them, from the beginning. It's what Nihlus would have wanted. As he spoke, he went through the events of the mission in his own mind, trying to see if there was some other way he could have gotten Nihlus out alive. In the end, it was a futile effort, just like it was the last three times he tried it, but he couldn't stop himself from doing it anyway.

The Council was an attentive audience at least, and only interrupted to request clarification of some event or technology they were unfamiliar with. Even so, it still took almost an hour to cover everything up to the detonation of the bomb, and he wasn't sure how to take it when they asked only a handful of questions about the conversation with Nazara. When he finished, he cast his gaze over the Councillors, trying to figure out what they were thinking. He may have been staring at a wall for all he could read from them though. All three had adopted an air of intense thought and calculation that was utterly opaque to him.

"In keeping with the spirit of our agreement," Shepard continued while the Council listened in silence. "We shall be sharing the mission logs, including suit recordings, of this mission once we have finished processing them. Captain Kirrahe will also be able to provide you with his perspective."

"Thank you, Commander," Councillor Tevos said with a complex expression on her face. "That would be appreciated."

"Quite," Valern said, his voice inscrutable. "But it raises questions of its own."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow and turned an inquisitive glance on the salarian. "Oh?"

"Yes. You and your government have made it quite clear what you would like us to believe about this situation," he said firmly, with a hint of dismissal. "And it is most convenient our only reliable source to corroborate your claims died under your command."

The commander blinked in surprise at that, barely able to believe his ears. "You can't be serious," he said flatly, unable to muster any emotion through the blank shock.

"Commander," Valern said seriously, his demeanor unruffled by Shepard's swiftly sharpening glare. "You will find that I have no sense of humor. I am always serious."

Indignant rage flooded through him. He distantly noticed his hands unconsciously curling into fists as he silently willed the sectoid-fucking salarian to explode under his glare. Tevos said something then, but he was far too angry to pay it the slightest mind.

"Nihlus was a comrade and a friend," he bit out, shaking in place with restrained anger. Small streamers of purple light flicked through his peripheral vision, and he couldn't stop the thrill of savage satisfaction that swept through him at the slight trepidation appearing in Valern's eyes. He bared his teeth at the overgrown frog and growled. "If you _ever_ insinuate that I killed him again, I will come to the Citadel and I will personally hang you by your own intestines."

The trepidation in Valern's eyes was joined by outrage as he finished and the salarian leveled a scathing glare on him. "You would not survive the attempt."

"Say it then, and let's find out," Shepard snarled at him, no longer sure whether or not he was bluffing.

Valern opened his mouth, no doubt to follow through, but before he could say a word, Tevos' voice cracked through the room like a whip. "Stop this at once!" she snapped angrily, forcibly grabbing the attention of everyone in the room with the ease of centuries of experience. The asari matriarch's form exuded a commanding presence that Shepard, even lost in the grip of rage, could not ignore. "Calm down, both of you!"

The commander turned his glare on her and tried to speak, but she bulled right over him. "No, do not speak. I appreciate that you are emotionally troubled by Nihlus' passing, Commander, but I will _not_ tolerate threats made against my associates. Control yourself or this meeting is over."

Shepard glared at her for a long moment, but internally, he knew she was right. Damnit, he thought he had worked past this already. He closed his eyes and forced his hands to unclench as he blew out a long breath. An effort of will forced the anger back from the forefront of his thoughts, down somewhere that he could deal with it later. When his eyes opened again, he was much more externally calm. He nodded tersely at Tevos and grunted an insincere apology to Valern.

"Very well," the asari Councillor said with an air of magnanimity, silencing whatever Valern was about to rejoin with with a mild glare. "Let us move on."

"Agreed," Sparatus cut in neutrally with a steady, assessing gaze on Shepard. "Regardless of the truth of the commander's report," he began, mandibles quirking slightly at the strangled protest Shepard made. "Saren is still out there, and he still has an army of geth at his command. It is in everyone's best interest that he is stopped, Reapers or no."

"Seconded," Tevos agreed firmly, and even Valern grudgingly nodded his agreement. She leveled a steady, calculating, heavy gaze on Shepard. "We will consult with Emissary Udina and a replacement for Nihlus' role will be chosen. Expect to meet them within three standard days."

Shepard nodded stiffly and Sparatus cut in. "In the meantime, we will be examining the mission logs and evidence you provide regarding the Reapers. I hope for all our sakes it is simply another of Saren's many tricks."

"I'm not that lucky," Shepard countered grimly with a shake of his head. "It's real Councillors, and I urge you to be ready." His hand lowered toward the control that would sever the connection, but paused a few inches above it. He glanced at each of the Councillors in turn and said, "Nihlus was a good man and a better soldier. I was honored to have met him. For what it's worth, thank you."

A low murmur of surprised acceptance met his words and he nodded farewell at them. Tevos favored him with a small smile. "I did not expect you to hold him in such regard, Commander."

He shrugged. "There's one truth every decent soldier knows, ma'am. No one's worth more than the men that bleed with you."

"Well said," Sparatus said with a firm, approving nod. "We will be in touch, Commander."

The holograms winked out and Shepard blew out a shaky breath. "That could have gone better," he muttered.

"Substantially," EDI agreed suddenly. Her avatar appeared to the side of the external comm projectors and oriented on the commander. "Still, you have only threatened gross bodily harm against the representative of one of the most powerful governments in the galaxy. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Don't remind me," Shepard groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Udina's gonna kill me."

* * *

"Any news?" Ashley asked in a subdued voice as Shepard entered the _Normandy_'s conference room. The question seemed to perk up the rest of the occupants, bringing their attention to rest firmly on the commander. He grimaced silently, but managed to hide it by turning away under the excuse of making room for Liara to slip in past him. When he turned back to the squad, his face was blank.

"It's confirmed," he said with a shake of his head. A disappointed murmur spread through the ring of chairs that lined the outer edge of the circular room. "The cleanup crews from the Citadel Task Force found traces of vahlenite and dextro-proteins near ground zero."

"Damnit," Ashley muttered angrily and glanced away with a solemn nod. "Guess a miracle was too much to hope for."

Wrex snorted dismissively and earned himself a fierce glare from the gunnery chief and Tali, of all people. He shrugged it off with practiced ease and said, "We all knew he was dead the second the bomb went off, lying to yourself about it didn't change anything."

"You are such a jackass," Ashley snapped at him, frustration leaking into her voice.

"I'm a realist," Wrex grunted back, meeting her glare with a calm, steady gaze.

"Is there a difference?" Garrus drawled sarcastically, glowering at the krogan.

"Urdnot Wrex is correct," Legion chimed in. "Surviving a multi-kiloton nuclear blast in that situation is physically impossible for a turian of Nihlus' size. Believing otherwise is fallacious at best. We do not understand why you would cling to such self-delusion."

"You're right," Tali said scathingly. "You don't understand."

The geth turned to her and cocked his head while the aperture over his eye twirled closed. "You were upset by our statement," he concluded at length. "Why?"

"Because Nihlus is dead, you soulless _bosh'tet_!" the quarian snapped at Legion with a heated glare. "Because you are twisting the knife! Because you don't even care! Because you lack _basic fucking empathy_!" she finished in a half-yell and heaving great breaths.

Legion blinked once and his headflaps flared into an expression Shepard could almost call surprise. "Yes. We are incapable of experiencing empathy. We thought that had been established."

Tali made a strangled noise of flustered outrage and shot to her feet, but before she could utter a word, Shepard decided to put his foot down. "Enough!" he snapped loudly, forcefully snaring the attention of the whole room. "Nihlus is dead and I know tempers are frayed, but this bickering isn't helping." He swept a mild glare over the principal arguers. "If you're going to fight each other, we may as well start killing ourselves now. The Reapers are the reason Nihlus is dead, save your anger and your grief until you can vent it on them. They're the enemy here. Kaidan, Nihlus, and so many others have already given their lives to stop the bastards. I'm not about to let their sacrifice be wasted."

He cast a gimlet eye over the suddenly still and subdued room. "If you want to tear into each other over honest mistakes, or ignorant offense," he added with a pointed glance at Legion. "That's fine, but you won't be doing it on my ship. Too many people have died already, and every second we waste bickering is time Nazara has to kill more." He locked gazes with every member of his crew in turn, staring them straight in the eye with every bit of sincerity he could muster. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but it burned with conviction. "It ends now. If you can't stop spitting on the people who gave their lives to get us this far, get off my ship. The rest of us have Reapers to deal with."

"You're right," Tali admitted quietly with a sigh as she sank back into her seat. The others murmured their agreement with her and Shepard nodded firmly.

"Speaking of Reapers," Garrus chimed in then, clearly determined to change the subject. "Did we manage to catch Nazara with the bomb?"

"Yes. It was hovering a couple score meters above the base," Shepard answered, but a scowl curled his lips. "Not that that did much though."

"What?" the turian asked, utterly shocked. "I- It was less than a hundred meters from an atmospheric nuke. How in the spirits' name did it survive?!"

Shepard scowled harder. "No idea. This is the last image we have of it, before it and its geth disappeared from the Hoc system."

He pressed a button on his omnitool and the holographic projector in the middle of the ring flickered to life. A scale replica of the Reaper appeared in mid air around the level of Shepard's shoulder. The image slowly rotated, ensuring The mechanical squid had clearly suffered damage, with large, jagged scars torn into the bottom of its hull and the second-right limb thing had been severed just over halfway down its length, but it was just as clearly still alive. And unless Shepard really missed his guess, still just as dangerous.

"Why do I get the feeling the nuke just pissed it off?" Ashley asked in a tone of apprehensive teasing.

"Doesn't matter. We bled the thing," Shepard pointed out, silently offering his thanks to Kaidan for passing along his knowledge of ancient movies. "And if it bleeds, we can kill it." Wrex half-cheered at the sentiment, prompting a small smirk from the commander. He shook his head and pushed the conversation back on track. "That said, if Nazara survived, I'd bet this year's pay, Saren did too. Our job hasn't changed any. We still need to find the Conduit before they do. EDI, were you able to get anything from the info we got out of Saren's lab?"

"No, Commander," the AI replied immediately, her avatar replacing the hologram of Nazara. "The information I received was primarily data concerning indoctrination and its effects on various species. There was no mention of the Conduit."

"Damn," Shepard swore under his breath. So much for easy. He turned to the resident Prothean expert. "Liara, how about you? Find anything in your research?"

"Unfortunately not," the asari admittedly hesitantly. "None of my research, nor that of the colleagues I have been able to contact, has turned up anything called 'The Conduit'." She pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and chewed on it for a brief second. "The search would be much easier if I knew what function it was meant to fulfill. Have you discovered anything in that regard?"

"Not yet," Shepard said in a frustrated growl. "We haven't been able to find _anything_ on the thing. I wish I knew how Saren found out about it, then maybe we could get somewhere."

The room descended into a contemplative silence as Shepard's thoughts raced. What the hell was he missing? There had to be some way for them to get ahead of Saren. He refused to accept otherwise. But what could it be?

"Wait," Ashley interrupted, excited realization running through her voice. "The beacon!"

"What?" Liara asked. "What beacon?"

"The Prothean beacon on Eden Prime!" Ashley answered hurriedly. "He said it himself. Eden Prime brought them closer to the Conduit, and the only thing worth a damn there was the beacon."

The words brought back flashes of the images he had seen right before Nazara had shown up. The chaotic jumble of memories he'd received from... a Prothean beacon! Aha!

Shepard leapt out of his seat with a cheer as he realized what Ashley was leading them toward. "That's it! You're a genius! It's gotta be in my head already!"

"Of cour- wait, what?!" she demanded incredulously, halfway through basking in his praise. She sent him a concerned look. "I was going to suggest we go find another one. What the hell are you talking about?"

"You got something from the beacon when it activated, didn't you?" Garrus asked with narrowed eyes. "That's why you fell over."

"I'd almost forgotten about it after everything that happened, but yea, I did," Shepard said, fighting against the glee building in his chest. Finally. They finally had a chance to already be there when Saren showed up. God damn, he wanted to see the look on the turian bastard's face when they beat him to the Conduit. "The best way I can think of to describe it is that the beacon gave me a vision. I saw, well, I'm not really sure. It's all a big jumble of death, destruction and the Reapers. It was like it poured a handful of different memories directly into my mind, all at once. It's hard to make any sense of, and it doesn't help when I start seeing colors that shouldn't exist, or recognize people I've never seen before. But with some work, I might be able to get something useful out of it."

"That's why he needed the Cipher!" Liara blurted out suddenly, only to blush as everyone in the room turned to her.

"What do you mean?" Shepard prompted her.

"I have been trying to determine _why_ Saren sought out the Cipher ever since we left Feros," she began carefully. "It didn't make any sense to me, but if he had been able to use the beacon on Eden Prime before it was destroyed, then that explains it. If he wished to understand the Prothean memories it imparted, he would have needed the Cipher. I am surprised you understand them as well as you seem to, Commander. Perhaps it is a side effect of your psionics?"

"Could be," Shepard said with a shrug. "You've got the Cipher though right? So it doesn't really matter either way."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out," Ashley said, her hands forming the universally understood T symbol. She arched an eyebrow at Shepard. "You are entirely too calm about the whole 'it got into your head' part of this."

_That_ brought his inner celebrations to a screeching halt. The previous glee was replaced by frantic worry. He hadn't even stopped to consider the possible ramifications. Could it have been the Reapers who supplied the memories? Could indoctrination implant memories like that? Hell, could his other memories have been affected? Was he even still himself?

Some of his internal panic must have shown on his face though, for Liara spoke up hurriedly. "I do not believe you need to worry, Commander. The Protheans were able to share memories through physical contact," she explained. "Their technology, especially communications, were based around this concept. From what you have described, this is a textbook case."

"Are you sure?" Ashley asked skeptically, half a heartbeat before Shepard could voice the same question.

"Very. Prothean memory interfaces are rare, but they are far from unheard of."

"Good enough for now," Shepard said with a firm nod, pushing aside his concerns for now. There was nothing he could do about it at this point anyway, save plan for contingencies. He looked over to Ashley, then Wrex and met their gaze. The grim seriousness in his eyes grabbed their attention and did not let it go. "If it looks like I'm turning though, you have full permission to put a bullet in my head."

Wrex inclined his head in a shallow nod, scowling all the while, and Ashley saluted, looking equally unhappy with the order. Both of them were professional enough to follow it through though, and that's what mattered. Ignoring the shocked and worried exclamations from Tali, he turned his attention back to Liara.

"Alright, assuming it is a Prothean memory, how are we going to figure out what it means?"

"The simplest way to make sense of the information is for you to learn to think like a Prothean. In other words, if you were to acquire the Cipher."

"You're suggesting we meld?" Shepard asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"Yes. I am an expert in Protheans, and I have the Cipher. Together, that may be enough to let us make sense of it all."

Shepard glanced around the room questioningly. "Anyone have any reasons not to?" When a chorus of negatives came back, he shrugged and stood up, motioning for Liara to do the same. "What the hell, let's do it."

Liara nodded and met Shepard in the middle of the room. She stepped in close, until only a few inches of space separated them. Her hands came up to rest on Shepard's cheeks and her eyes drifted close. "Relax, Commander, and embrace eternity."

The asari's eyelids snapped open, revealing the fathomless black voids that had replaced her eyes. With no further warning, the memories came in a rush, pouring out of the back of his mind in a stream, overwhelming him. Conscious thought vanished under the tide of memories and sensation.

An overwhelming feeling of terror and pain filled his mind as countless waves of Reapers and mutant husks filled his vision. Blood and viscera ran through the streets in endless rivers as, one by one, acquaintances, friends, even family were torn violently apart by the remorseless and unceasing advance of the Reaper horde. People and corpses alike were impaled on dragon's teeth, their bodies sucked dry and turned into another mindless drone in the endless Reaper army.

Suddenly, he was blinded by a surge of light. He blinked nonexistent eyelids and the image resolved into twin stars, closely orbiting each other. Another blink and he was moving, pulled inexorably by an irresistible force, out and away from the stars. He passed through clouds of stellar dust, ultimately zooming past a planet in a mad dash he could barely comprehend. The second planet of the system loomed ominously, growing and growing until nothing else remained. This planet was important, vital. He knew it like he knew Jenny's face. This was the place he needed to go.

Without warning, a Reaper lunged out of the planet bellowing a scream that sent icicles racing through Shepard's very soul. Icy fingers probed deep into his heart and refused to relent. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. All he could do was _fear_.

Then it was gone, and he was back in the conference room. Liara, her eyes back to their normal blue, took a step away from him and visibly sagged with a sigh. "Th, that was intense," she half-whispered.

Shepard could only nod his agreement as he panted heavily, barely noticing the restless stirring from the rest of the squad. They stood there in silence for several long seconds, slowly recollecting themselves before the commander spoke. "That planet at the end. That's the one, isn't it?"

"Most certainly," Liara agreed.

"Did you recognize it?"

"I have been studying the known systems that link to the Mu Relay and there are several possibilities at first glance. Give me a moment," she said as her eyes drifted half closed. Shepard could see them flicking around as her mind raced furiously. Not even a full ten seconds after she started though, they popped right back open with a sparkle of pleased recognition. "Ilos! The Conduit is on Ilos!"

"Then that's where we're going," Shepard announced firmly. "But not alone." He looked at the others. "I'll call my superiors once we're done here and see if we can't get a couple supercarriers to help secure the Conduit. Be ready to be right back in the thick of it within two days."

"You got it, Commander," Ashley said with a cheerful salute. "I can't wait."

The rest of the squad echoed her sentiment and Shepard met it with a fierce grin. Things were on track to possibly even beat Saren to the objective. He was going to relish this for a _very_ long time.

* * *

Emissary Udina strode into the Citadel Council's private audience chamber without fanfare, briskly making his way through the large, well-appointed room to his, and every other petitioner's, appointed place. He briefly studied the three aliens across the large wooden table from him before giving a perfunctory nod. "Good evening, Councillors."

"Quite," Tevos returned the greeting with a polite and, to her credit, believably sincere smile. Udina met it with a slight quirk of his lips, just enough to her know he didn't buy it in the slightest. "I am afraid this meeting may be premature however. We have not yet finalized the list of candidates for Nihlus' replacement."

"I had expected as much," Udina admitted with a sharp nod. Tevos gave him an arch, inquisitive look and he stopped fighting the small, slightly mocking smile that spread across his lips. "And it's why I asked for this meeting."

"Oh?" Valern asked, clearly intrigued. "Are you perhaps hoping to influence our choices?"

"Not in the slightest," Udina said cheerfully, silently relishing in the way Tevos' expression almost-imperceptibly tightened. "I'm here to tell you that while Nihlus' loss was regrettable and unfortunate, his, or more accurately, his replacement's, services aboard the _Normandy_ are no longer necessary."

"And why is that?" Tevos asked with clear skepticism.

"The _Normandy_ will be out of Citadel Space in a matter of hours, if it has not already left." They hadn't expected that, Udina realized with a small smirk. It was such a rare sight to catch these three genuinely surprised, and the emissary was determined to take advantage of that while he could. "As such, there is no longer any need for a Spectre to be dogging our operatives. I believed you would appreciate knowing as much."

"Wh... yes, thank you," Tevos began in a flustered rush, only for the iron bands of self-control to visibly lock into place as she continued. "Though it is also... unexpected."

"Very much so," Sparatus agreed carefully and leveled a piercing stare on the emissary. "And I can think of only one reason why it would happen. Tell me, Emissary, where is the Conduit?"

"Ilos, in the Refuge system," Udina answered easily, sharing it without a second thought. Council forces would only make securing the system easier, after all. "XCOM is gearing up to find and secure the device as we speak. With any luck, we will be able to beat Saren to it."

"How did you come across this information?" Valern asked speculatively.

"You've seen the mission logs Commander Shepard delivered, correct?" When the Councillors nodded, Udina continued. "In Saren's lab, the Prothean beacon injected Prothean memories into the commander. With the help of Dr. T'soni, he was able to make sense of the memories. According to the commander, it was made quite clear that Ilos is the key to this whole mess."

"Did these memories indicate what the Conduit is supposed to _do_?" Sparatus asked with a raised brow.

"Unfortunately, no," the emissary admitted sheepishly. "Judging from what we know of Saren's ultimate goal however, I am reasonably certain it is a weapon of some sort that will allow he and his geth to match the Citadel Defense Fleet. That is only a guess however."

"I see," Tevos drawled thoughtfully. She stared into the middle distance for several long heartbeats before turning her attention back to Udina with a shake of her head. "How confident are you in the accuracy of this information?"

"As confident as we can be in information 50,000 years out of date," he answered firmly, sending a mild, reproving glare at the asari for the implied insult. "Commander Shepard is many things, but neither delusional nor a liar are on the list. In any event, we will be acting on it."

"Very well," Tevos said formally. No hint of what she truly thought made its way to her features. "As Refuge is beyond our borders, all we can do in response is to wish you good luck. We ask only that you inform us when the situation is fully resolved."

Udina cracked a small, appreciative smile when the other Councillors echoed the sentiment. "Of course, Councillor. You will be among the first I inform once Saren is dead."

Tevos grimaced at his blunt wording, but nodded all the same. "Thank you. Was there anything else you wished to discuss?"

"Only that I recommend you begin preparing for an assault on the Citadel," Udina said with quiet conviction. He tore his gaze from Tevos and met Sparatus' gaze evenly. "If we figured out the beacon, I can only assume Saren has too. If he beats us to the Conduit, or even beats us in general, he will be coming for the Citadel, and he will be coming hard. It is ultimately your choice, but if Saren wins, we will all die. Don't let that happen."

Valern started to bluster, but Udina ignored it completely in favor of his staring match with Sparatus. The turian's assessing gaze met his evenly before he inclined his head in a minute nod.

"We will take your words into consideration," Tevos said diplomatically. "But that is all we will say on the matter. Forgive us if we do not divulge our military deployments to a foreign government."

Udina sent her a wry smile. "Understandable." He glanced at the other Councillors, then back to Tevos. "That is all I had to say. If there is nothing else..." he trailed off inquisitively.

"A final word of advice, Emissary," Sparatus ventured in the ensuing silence. "If your forces intend to move through the Terminus, I recommend they step lightly, especially if they pass through Omega. Many of the principal players there do not take kindly to outsiders. XCOM's mere presence, let alone their normal methods, is liable to provoke a retaliatory war. Something that, if Commander Shepard is to be believed, none of us can afford."

"Duly noted," Udina said, not bothering to stop his eyebrows as they climbed past his hairline. Freely offered advice like that was not something he had expected. "I will pass it along. Thank you."

* * *

"I don't like it," Councillor Sparatus announced evenly the very instant the door slid closed behind the human emissary. Tevos turned to her colleague, but remained silent, content to wait for him to elaborate, as she knew he would. "It's too convenient. Nihlus dies, mere hours before they just happen to discover the location of the Conduit?" He shook his head. "I stopped believing in coincidence decades ago."

"Perhaps," Tevos agreed calmly, even as she fought to keep her surprise veiled. She had never thought _she _would ever be the one defending the humans' actions. "I assure you, however, that Commander Shepard was genuine. There are few that can fool my perceptions, and the Carnifex is not among them."

"Agreed," Councillor Valern offered. "I have analyzed the footage of that conversation, and it was either genuine or the commander has unprecedented control over his involuntary muscle groups. Analysis of the data supplied by the commander also suggests that it has not been tampered with."

"I know," Sparatus returned, his voice full of resigned frustration. "I could see it in his eyes. That doesn't mean I have to like it. We have no idea what this Conduit is capable of, no way to prepare for it, and it will inevitably fall into either Saren's or XCOM's hands. Neither scenario is one I can see ultimately ending well for us."

"Unfortunately, you are correct," Tevos said with a quiet sigh. If Saren triumphed, he would bring the weapon to bear against the Citadel. She still did not know what he wanted by doing so, perhaps revenge for some imagined slight, or some favor for his new masters, but it did not matter. She knew him well enough to know that whatever his goal was, he would kill everyone in his path. It was just unfortunate that this time, that path led into the heart of the Citadel.

The other alternative was only marginally better in her mind. XCOM would be a less immediately deadly threat, but they were no less dangerous. A weapon capable of allowing a small geth splinter force to overcome the entire Citadel Defense Fleet would be a potent threat, one Emissary Udina would be all too eager to wave in their faces. And the threat of force had diminishing returns so long as the force was not applied. A shudder ran down her spine at that thought. She did not wish to know how they would apply it, when the time inevitably came.

"The Emissary _did_ provide us with the Conduit's location," Valern pointed out, pulling the asari from her thoughts. "It would not be difficult to dispatch our own forces to try and acquire it for ourselves."

"At what cost?" Sparatus countered with a grimace. "The Refuge system is deep in the Terminus. Sending any force large enough to counter both Saren _and_ XCOM would cripple our defensive capabilities and provoke a war with the Terminus."

"And it may well be worth the price."

Tevos blinked in surprise at the salarian Councillor's words before she levelled an incredulous stare on him. "How?" she asked sharply. Her mind raced as she tried to determine what her amphibious colleague had seen that she had not.

"Surely war with the Terminus is preferable to complete extinction?" Valern asked pointedly, pulling a scowl from the matriarch. Of course. She missed the one thing she desperately did not want to think about. Silently, she chided herself for letting it get so far. She would serve no one but Saren if she was paralyzed by fear and uncertainty. Trillions of lives hung in the balance. She could not afford to let her desires blind her to reality.

"That assumes that seizing the Conduit will truly prevent the Reapers' return, or if not, that we can defeat them despite our forces being depleted by war with the Terminus, and that Saren will not take the opportunity to attack us while our forces are occupied elsewhere." Sparatus countered with a fierce scowl. "And that the Reaper threat is even real." He shook his head. "Despite my increasing certainty otherwise, I would not be overly surprised if this Reaper business was nothing but an elaborate ruse. It would certainly fit with Saren's past methods."

"I want to agree," Tevos said with a brief nod of acknowledgement before her voice turned melancholy. "So very much. But I cannot. Saren is a master manipulator, and a ruse of this magnitude is not beyond him, but then one has to ask. Why? What does he stand to gain from it?"

"A smokescreen?" Valern offered. "To distract us all from his true goals?"

"Perhaps, but if so, would it not be more effective for him to continue to operate as a Spectre? With carte blanche throughout our worlds?" Tevos shook her head with a sigh. "It makes little sense to discard the protection of anonymity and the support of the Council in exchange for becoming the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy. Perhaps I am wrong, and I dearly hope that I am, but I am nearly certain that it is not a ruse."

"Which brings us back to the original question," Valern pointed out with a frown. From the slump of his shoulders and sag to his features, Tevos could tell that she had not said anything he did not already know, but did not want to believe. "What are we to do about the Conduit?"

"The only thing we _can _do," Sparatus said, his voice firm and unyielding. "Bolster our defenses around the Citadel and hope that XCOM is able to handle it. With luck, Commander Shepard will destroy it as he did the beacon on Eden Prime."

"And if we are not so fortunate?" Tevos asked with a raised brow. "XCOM will pose a grave threat to all of us should they acquire control of it instead."

Sparatus sighed heavily then met her gaze. Steady, unflinching drive bore out of the turian's eyes and burned itself into her retinas "As long as they are a graver threat to the Reapers, I can live with that. For now."

"And afterward?"

"We'll think of something," Sparatus said confidently. "Off the top of my head, I suggest we use the opportunity provided by the threat of mutual annihilation to acquire our own copy of it."

"That may work," Valern said contemplatively.

"And if the Reapers do turn out to be a ruse?" Tevos cut in quickly, before the salarian could start planning a STG heist aloud.

Sparatus sighed. "Then a lot of people are likely to die, eventually. If you have any workable alternatives, I would be glad to hear them." Tevos looked away, fighting down the flush of shame that tried to creep over her face. Sparatus nodded resignedly. "As I thought. Are we agreed?"

With a glance at Valern, who nodded reluctantly, Tevos sighed and said, "Yes. Goddess help us, but yes."

* * *

Admiral Steven Hackett snapped as close to attention as his seat allowed when the holographic projectors in the front of his desk whirred to life with a soft chime. Bright blue-white light flared like a field of stars before swirling together and resolving into the short, stocky, and aging form of the Supreme Commander of XCOM only a few feet from the front of his desk. Despite his small frame however, the man exuded an almost overwhelming sense of presence. Without effort or attention, he utterly dominated the space around him, even through a hologram. It was little wonder that he had led XCOM for over forty years now.

Hawkish eyes locked onto the admiral's own the instant the connection solidified, and Hackett saluted sharply. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

The Commander returned the salute before he spoke, a distinctly pleased tone to his usual low rumble. "At ease, Admiral. I've got a new assignment for you."

"What do you need?" Hackett asked in a tone of polite inquiry, silently praying this wasn't going to turn out to be another charlie foxtrot. XCOM could ill-afford another mess like the Geth Offensive.

"Commander Shepard believes he has located the Conduit," the Commander replied without preamble. A rush of conflicting emotions surged through Hackett at the words, the potent mix of apprehension and excitement that always came with the knowledge that soon, he would be ordering men to their deaths in order to protect millions more. It was a heady feeling that, while not exactly welcome, was at least familiar. It was just unfortunate that his prayers to never have to feel it again kept going unanswered.

"You want me to retrieve it," he said aloud, clearly pre-empting the other man's next words.

"Yes," the Commander agreed. He met Hackett's stare with a steady gaze. "This is the first opportunity we have ever had to pre-empt Saren," he spat the name like a curse. "And this Nazara. You are to find and secure or, if necessary, destroy the device before they can get their hands on it."

"Very we-" Hackett began, only to cut himself off as a newcomer joined the Commander's hologram. The richly appointed suit and sharp, angular features of Donnel Udina resolved in a matter of seconds and the emissary nodded respectfully at both other participants in the call.

"You're late," the Commander rumbled a mild rebuke that was punctuated by an annoyed half-glare.

"My apologies," Udina said with a motion somewhere between a nod and a bow. "Following through with my meeting with the Council took longer than I had expected."

"No matter," the Commander dismissed the excuse perfunctorily. "What did the Council have to say?"

"What we expected," Udina answered calmly. "They're going to sit back and watch until they see an opportunity to advance their interests. They won't actively hinder us, but we shouldn't expect any help from them unless Saren comes knocking on their front door." He shook his head and muttered, "Idiots."

"That was not unexpected." The Commander blew out a quiet, resigned breath, then turned to Hackett. "Very well. Admiral, take the _O'Connell_ and the _Bakker_ to Ilos as quickly as possible and stop Saren from getting his hands on the Conduit."

"We may need another plan, Commander," Udina offered before Hackett could respond, prompting raised eyebrows from both other men. The emissary was smart enough not to try and offer military advice, so there must be a diplomatic reason. The only question in Hackett's mind was what.

Fortunately, a raised silver eyebrow from the Commander was all it took to get him to elaborate. "Something Councillor Sparatus said in our meeting prompted me to investigate the polities that control the Relays we will need to reach Ilos. The political situation in several of them is... sensitive, to say the least, and we are not well-liked in any of them. Sending our forces in so directly could quite easily provoke a war with half the Terminus Systems."

The Commander scowled fiercely. "How easily?"

"It is difficult to tell. To put it crudely, they are pants-shittingly terrified of us. They may well decide it isn't worth aggravating us. Or they may think we're trying to attack them, and launch a preemptive strike." Udina grimaced. "I have no doubts that two supercarriers are more than a match for any three Terminus nations, but dealing with them will take time."

"Time we don't have," Hackett said grimly. "What are the alternate routes?"

"There aren't any," Udina answered with a frown. "None that don't add more than a week of travel time, at least."

"Unacceptable," the Commander rumbled. "Saren is probably already headed toward the Conduit, and if he gets his hands on it, we'll be up to our eyeballs in Reapers. We can't afford any delays." His sharp gaze panned over to Hackett and he rattled off orders. "Admiral Hackett, take the _Yamaguchi_ as well. Three supercarriers should be enough to keep even the most reckless x-ray too worried to attack for long enough for you to get past them."

"If confronted, I recommend you try to make it clear you are 'just passing through', as it were," Udina offered calmly. "It is unlikely to be truly believed, but it will give them an excuse to not press the attack. So long as you do not engage any of them, I would give it better than even odds we can maintain a fragile peace."

"Regardless, your priority is to get to Ilos as soon as is physically possible. If that requires you to go through them, do not hesitate to do so." Hackett had to fight down a smile as Udina suddenly looked like he had swallowed a lemon. "We can deal with the fallout when the Reapers aren't hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles."

"Yes sir," the admiral agreed firmly. "I'll make sure it gets done."

The Commander nodded. "Get to it then. Commander Shepard will meet you in the Omega Nebula. He'll be able to brief you on what to expect." The Commander saluted. "Good luck Admiral. Vigilo Confido."

"Vigilo Confido," Hackett returned the salute as the holograms faded. When they were gone, he finally stopped fighting the tired slump in his shoulders and exhaled noisily. He shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. "Here we go, once more unto the breach," he muttered distractedly, his mind already racing with plans and strategies. "At least this time, the bad guy's going to stay the bad guy."

* * *

"Admiral Hackett," Shepard greeted the man with a salute as he came to a stop within one of the _O'Connell_'s many briefing rooms. His eyes flicked to the sole other occupant of the room and real warmth filtered through the layers of military protocol. "Captain Anderson. What can I do for you?"

"At ease, Commander," Hackett said, returning the salute. Beside him, Anderson echoed the action and smiled in greeting. "I asked you here because I want you to tell us everything you know about what we can expect to run into on Ilos. I've read the reports, but I'd prefer to go over it with someone who was there."

Shepard nodded sharply and immediately began to brief the two on everything he and his team had seen Saren and the heretic geth pull off over the course of the last two months. Every tactic, every trick, every technology they had used was laid bare before two of the best tacticians and strategists in the entirety of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit. It was a productive, if long, conversation that ultimately ended with workable high-level responses for several of the most likely scenarios they would face on Ilos.

There was only one wildcard in the equation: Nazara. And despite his best efforts, Shepard was forced to admit they simply didn't know enough about it. Not even these two could make an effective battle plan around only 'highly advanced', 'ludicrously durable', 'mind controlling', and 'terrifying' after all. It was a disheartening realization.

It didn't seem to overly bother the senior officers though. As the briefing wound down, Hackett wore a small, satisfied smile that Shepard would almost call a smirk while Anderson nodded pensively. "Good," the admiral said into the ensuing silence. "We don't know as much as I would have liked, but combined with the records from Eden Prime, we can at least establish a minimum baseline for its capabilities."

"And more importantly," Captain Anderson cut in. "We know how to kill it."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Hackett chided the captain gently. "We've damaged it, but you can be sure that it will have learned from the experience. All we've really managed is to prove that it can be hurt." He chuckled quietly. "That's one hell of a morale victory though. Nicely done, Commander."

"That was all on Nihlus," Shepard said, refusing to take the praise from the man who bought it with his life. He met the admiral's gaze and silently willed the man to understand that. "He's the one that kept the geth distracted long enough to lure Nazara in."

Hackett arched an eyebrow and a sharp, piercing stare bored into Shepard's eyes before he nodded sharply. Shepard returned the nod with a shallow, thankful bow of his head. The unspoken message had been understood.

"Very well. Now, for the mission itself." Hackett cleared his throat gently and continued, rattling off orders with ease. "As you are the most experienced of our ground forces against the heretic geth, and the _only_ group with anything higher than a snowball's chance in hell of finding the Conduit, you will be in charge of everything we can spare from any necessary combat operations. You are to search for it while the rest of our forces handle whatever hostiles are in the system. If you manage to find it before we are finished with that, report to Captain Anderson and we will secure it."

Shepard nodded firmly. A small part of him wasn't happy about what amounted to being sidelined during such an important battle, but the rest of him yelled it down. Finding the Conduit was everything. It didn't matter who won the battle; whoever walked away with the Conduit won the war. His pride and bloodlust would have to suck it up and cope. Besides, if the geth manage to find it first, he was sure to end up in the thickest of the fighting.

"I can do that, sir," he said aloud, his voice firm and confident. "We'll find it."

"I hope so," Anderson replied evenly. He gazed off into the middle distance as his mind almost audibly churned through his thoughts. "It would be much easier to share your confidence if we knew anything about it though."

"True," Shepard admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "We don't know what the Conduit is supposed to be, do, or look like. But we have something Saren probably doesn't."

"And what's that?" Hackett asked, one eyebrow firmly raised in an inquisitive gesture.

"An asari Prothean expert with the Prothean Cipher," Shepard answered easily. "Liara's field of study was the Prothean extinction, and from what she's said, she even found subtle hints of the Reaper's existence _decades_ ago, not that anyone believed her theories. With the Cipher in her head, she's the next best thing to a Prothean itself." He met Hackett's curious gaze with a firm one of his own. "If anyone can spot the Conduit, she can."

"I don't like relying on a civilian," the admiral replied with a mild scowl. "Especially not with something this important." He shook his head and sighed quietly. "But we don't have much choice. Are you sure of her loyalty?"

"Yes," Shepard said firmly, silently trying to impress upon both men the full extent of his belief in that. "She's already proven herself to me. What's more, Saren and Nazara brainwashed, and were ultimately responsible for the death of, her mother. She has every reason to work with us, and none to work against."

"That's good enough for me," Anderson said with a nod. He shot a look at Hackett. "Admiral?"

"I agree," Hackett answered before turning to Shepard. "Bring her with you then, and make sure the geth can't touch her. From everything you've said, she may be our only hope to find the stupid thing."

"Yes sir," Shepard agreed. His gaze flicked back and forth between his superiors. "Was there anything else to discuss?"

They glanced at each other and came to a mutual agreement. "No Commander," Hackett said. "You're dismissed. Vigilo Confido."

"Vigilo Confido," Shepard returned the phrase as he snapped to attention and saluted them both. Once they returned it, he turned smartly and walked out of the room, hurrying back toward the _Normandy_. There was no time to waste. After all, he only had a couple of days to commission and manufacture an asari-shaped helmet for a set of Titan Armor.

* * *

A sharp, sudden jerk, felt deep in his gut, broke through the _O'Connell_'s inertial dampeners as the enormous ship's brief journey through the latest mass relay came to an end. By now, after so long defending the Fringe worlds, it was a familiar sensation for Admiral Hackett and the rest of the crew. One so commonplace that barely anyone on the bridge even noticed it. Which meant they were all actively manning their stations when the alert came in.

"Sir!" one of the sensor officers barked, his voice cutting through the low bustle of the bridge like a knife. "Mid-sized fleet inbound, closing rapidly. Two minutes until they reach maximum effective range."

The admiral scowled, but before he could speak, the primary comm officer interrupted. "We're being hailed, sir. It claims to represent the locals and is demanding to speak with you."

"Put 'em through, Lieutenant," Hackett said, wiping the scowl from his face as he settled back into his chair. He had hoped to make it to Ilos without having to deal with this, but he, along with everyone else aboard, knew it was inevitable. Now he could only hope the aliens could be talked down.

The comm officer turned back to her station and a second later, the holographic emitter in the arm of Hackett's chair whirred to life, swiftly resolving into a two dimensional image of his caller. He couldn't see much of the alien beside its head, and that was not a terribly pleasant sight. It looked almost like a demented crossbreed between a velociraptor and a timberwolf that fell into a vat of radioactive waste. Thick grey hair sprouted from its neck and the back of its head in an enormous mane, but the scaly skin of its face was utterly bare. All the better to see the three enormous, slitted, and bright green eyes that glared angrily out from above a long, vaguely canine muzzle filled with viciously curved teeth.

It spoke then, in a rapid mix of hisses, clicks and barks Hackett had no hope of comprehending. The translation suites XCOM had purchased from the Citadel, however, proved up to the task and, lagging only moments behind, converted its words into English. "Humans! I am Lord Hierarch of the _Krrtakoss_ Dominion, and you are trespassing on sovereign territory. This is an act of war! You will return to the relay and leave at once."

Hackett's lips thinned as he fought to suppress the scowl trying to edge into them. "That's what we're trying to do, Lord Hierarch," he said, carefully keeping his voice calm and conciliatory. "We just need to reach the..." He glanced over at the map of their planned route and found the next step. "Rannael-2 relay and we will be out of your hair."

"Unacceptable," the thing growled back at him. "We do not allow foreign militaries to stampede through our territory. You will return whence you came, immediately."

"We can't do that," Hackett said firmly. "And we don't have time to argue about it. We're not looking for a fight, and I'm sorry about causing trouble, but we're going to the relay. With or without your permission."

"You dare?!" the Lord Hierarch hissed dangerously, all three eyes somehow shifting to a blood red color in a fraction of a second. "Impudent _skrrssik_! I should-"

Another voice, its words unintelligible, cut off the Lord Hierarch's rant before it could really get started, moments before its eyes went wide and slowly shifted back to a much dimmer form of their original green. A beat later, it shook its head in a distinctly leonine movement then focused back on Hackett. When it spoke, its voice was firm and unrelenting, but carried an undercurrent of something Hackett could not identify. "You are an invader, _trespasser_. This cannot be allowed!"

"And I can't allow you to stop us," Hackett said, equally firmly but with far more confidence. "We've wasted enough time as it is. Either attack us, or get out of the way, it's your choice." He twisted his mouth into a mirthless, vicious, and toothy smile. "But before you make your choice, remember that I've got a few dozen boarding torpedoes stuffed full of Chryssalids."

The alien's eyes dulled into a low red-black that was nearly impossible to distinguish from its sclera. "You, you would not dare!" it thundered in response.

It was right, Hackett had to admit. He wouldn't unleash those things on anything shy of the Ethereals, not again. This guy didn't have to know that though. He leaned forward and gave the Lord Hierarch his best challenging look. "How much are you willing to bet on that?"

Small flecks of yellow leaked into its red-black eyes as its gaze wavered for a brief instant, but disappeared as quickly as it came a beat later. Resolve hardened its gaze and it turned away from the hologram. Its mouth opened, probably to bark orders, but was interrupted by another voice whose source Hackett could neither see nor understand.

He didn't have long to contemplate it though, for the very next instant, his sensor officer called out, "Relay is activating! We have incoming!"

"What is it?" Hackett snapped, his confidence taking a small hit. If it was reinforcements for these _krrtakoss_, this situation could very easily turn disastrous.

"It's, it's _geth_," the sensor officer answered a few seconds later. "Half a fleet's worth, and more are coming!" The officer's voice turned confused as he continued after an almost undetectable pause. "Sir, their IFF transponders match those fought in the Geth Offensive. I, I think they're friendly."

At almost the same time, a wideband transmission cut into the middle of Hackett's conversation with the Lord Hierarch then, adding another, albeit empty, window to the display before his chair. "Greetings, Hackett-Admiral," the geth said, its voice flat. "Are you in need of assistance?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Hackett saw the Lord Hierarch's eyes cycling rapidly between sickly yellow, burnt red, and pitch black. He couldn't fully repress his smile at the sight, it was far too amusing. "I'm not sure," he told the geth, before deliberately eying the _krrtakoss_. "Am I?"

The Lord Hierarch's eyes flashed a fierce, blazing red and it snarled angrily before its eyes dimmed to a sullen ember. "No," it spat vehemently. "You may p- p- pass," it managed to get out with great difficulty, as if the words were physically painful to say. It punctuated its statement with a scathing red-white glare. "This will be remembered, human."

"I'm sure," Hackett agreed with a small grimace. "With any luck, we'll never see each other again."

The Lord Hierarch hissed disparagingly at him and the connection died. Hackett blew out a long breath and sent an inquiring look to the sensor officer. "They're turning around," the man said without further prompting. "Looks like we're clear."

"Good," the admiral said. He turned his attention to the still-open connection with the geth. "Thank you for your assistance..." he trailed off meaningfully.

"You may refer to this terminal as 'Optimus'," it said quietly.

Optimus? Hackett thought bewilderedly. Why does that sound so familiar? He shook his head. There were more important matters to tend to. "Very well," he said aloud. "Your arrival was quite timely, Optimus. Thank you. Now, not that I'm complaining, but why are you here? I was under the impression the geth did not leave the Perseus Veil."

"We were informed of your efforts to halt the Old Machines," it answered easily. "As per our agreement, we judged it necessary to offer our assistance in this endeavor."

Hackett's lips quirked in a smirk. "Excellent," he said, wholly meaning it. A fleet of true geth to match Saren's heretics. Things were looking up already. "Welcome to the team."


	25. Applied Research

**Chapter 24: Applied Research**

"Sir! Geth vessels in Ilos orbit!" the sensor officer barked less than a second after the _O'Connell_ emerged from the relay and into the Refuge system proper. "IFF matches vessels present at Eden Prime." Admiral Hackett cursed under his breath. Not even twenty clicks into the system and half their plans go flying out the window. Murphy really was a bitch.

The sensor officer paid no attention to the admiral's brief moment of grousing though, and routed the sensor feed to the holographic platform at the heart of the supercarrier's bridge. A flicker of rainbows heralded the appearance of the planet, and its unwelcome guests, only a few feet from the aged admiral, who turned laser-like focus onto the display. Disappointment and frustrated anger that Saren was, yet again, one step ahead, was forced aside. He had no time to deal with it now. Plans, contingencies and fallbacks raced through his mind as he tried to map out the coming battle.

Only for his thoughts to grind to halt as his conscious mind finally processed what the display was telling him. This... made no sense. It went against every bit of military or tactical thinking he'd ever heard, experienced, or been taught. Why would the geth be retrieving the Conduit, the _key to victory_ for this entire conflict, with a handful of cruisers and their attending frigates? And why wasn't Nazara here?

He didn't realize he had voiced the question until Optimus answered over the still-open comm channel. "There is a significant probability Nazara is lying in wait with the remainder of the heretic forces."

Hackett nodded with a scowl, which deepened when it became clear that they'd been spotted. The orderly patterns of the heretic geth over Ilos suddenly erupted into elegantly chaotic activity. In a matter of moments, the smooth, grid-like sweeps around the planet had dissolved into a loose spherical formation that stood firmly between the approaching ships and the planet that would determine all their fates.

The admiral's lips quirked into a grim smile. Time to find out what's going on. Without turning from the display, he started barking orders. "Get Lieutenant-Commander Shepard and his team on the ground and searching, then tell the _Normandy_ to remain cloaked in a low orbit. They're on overwatch for whatever surprises the geth are planning. All supercarriers are to retreat from the system and take up position one lightyear out. Move it people!" He glanced away from the _O'Connell_'s controllers as they hurriedly started conveying his orders and over to the comm windows containing Optimus and both captains of the other vessels, ignoring the brief sensation of portal travel as he did. "Captain Yamada, once in position, your forces are going to spring the trap. Use just enough to ensure the bait will be lost if they don't react. When it's sprung, Optimus' forces will strike, assisted by the rest of the _Yamaguchi_'s command. Drive them toward Ilos"

"Understood," the geth said evenly, alongside a firm nod from the slim asian man in the window next to him.

Hackett acknowledged it with a nod and continued. "The _Bakker_ and _O'Connell_ will then be the anvil to your hammer."

"As you command," Captain Zhao Yang of the XCS _Bakker_ replied with a shallow bow, moments before all three windows blinked closed.

Immediately, Hackett's attention shifted to the holographic display before him, just in time to witness thousands of the _Yamaguchi_'s ACVs, and one cloaked frigate, pour out of dozens of portals around, and within, the heretic geth formation. The space fighter equivalents to the ground forces' SHIVs blitzed out of their portals in a seemingly endless stream that immediately moved to swarm over the less than two score heretic geth capital ships.

The geth reacted instantly. Each and every one of the capital ships swung out to face the surrounding portals and dozens of spinal mounted cannons filled the intervening space with speeding death. Round after round was sent flying into the cloud of incoming ACVs, scattering them like leaves in an autumn wind. At the same time, geth fighters dropped like shed scales from the cruisers before rising up in an answering swell that charged straight for the horde of drones swelling inside the heretic's formation.

A massive furball broke out in the very heart of the heretic geth fleet, turning the space within into a chaotic mess of human drones, geth fighters, and uncountable streams of both plasma and mass accelerator rounds. The ACV advance from within slammed to a screeching halt as the geth fighters' fully self aware and adaptable AI proved up to the task of keeping the vastly more limited, and equally more numerous, drone VIs too busy to turn on the capital ships. The drones were mired in the fight, forced by a combination of skillful maneuvers and expertly laid traps to slowly grind their way through the geth fighter corp before they could even consider taking on the bigger ships.

Fortunately, they didn't have to. The numbers in the heart of the formation were only a small fraction of the entire force brought to bear, and there were no such fighter screens to deal with the rest. A veritable tsunami of ACVs rushed in against the heretic geth, crashing against the rocks of GARDIAN salvos, even as they flowed around spinal rounds. But GARDIAN lasers alone could no more stem this tide than they could halt the inexorable flow of time. There were simply too many, backed as they were by defense matrices and vahlenite plating. One by one, the GARDIAN banks overheated and fell silent, having claimed only a fraction of the attack force now enveloping the geth craft.

Green-white shields flared to life around each one as the swarm of ACVs descended. Fusion lances and plasma bolts beat a steady rain against the shields, even as laser cannons boiled away large swathes of the armor beneath, and Hackett dismissed the fight from his attention. The heretic geth could not hope to win now. He would do far more good searching for a hint of the ambush he was sure was coming.

Seconds passed in what felt like hours as he searched, bound and determined to catch Nazara as soon as it started to move. He was going to turn this ambush around, and then he was going to kill the omnicidal robot. That was the only outcome he would accept.

And so he was caught by surprise when the last geth ship fell silent, its corpse drifting in a cloud with that of its fellows and the hundreds of ACVs that would not be returning, and nothing else happened. No ships moved, no robotic cuttlefish came crawling out of the moon. It was as if Nazara really had sent these here on their own. Hackett scowled fiercely at the display, half-heartedly searching for the reinforcements he still half-expected while his mind churned over what this turn of events actually meant.

If the geth ships weren't bait for an ambush, where was the rest of the heretic forces? Did that mean the geth already had the Conduit? If so, why did these not simply join them and leave XCOM to search fruitlessly here? And if not, that just raised the question yet again. Why would such a small force be dispatched to secure the key to the whole conflict?

He blew out a low, frustrated breath and slumped back in his chair. This raised a whole lot of questions and next to nothing in the way of answers, and that didn't look to be changing anytime soon. Goddamn Reapers. He missed the simplicity of dealing with Batarians. He knew what to expect from the four-eyed bastards at least.

He shook his head to dislodge the useless thought. He'd just have to find some answers then. A quick motion to his comm officer opened connections with both of his subordinates and his ally. "Good job, Captain Yamada," he said, congratulating the _Yamaguchi_ on its bloodless victory before he focused his attention on the others. "But now it's time to look for the Conduit. Divide up your assigned portion of the planet's surface and send out your ground forces in standard search and rescue patterns. Report any anomalies or functional Prothean technology. Be wary of any geth forces on the ground. We have no way to know how many platforms they deployed before we arrived."

"Average potential force for the heretic ships that were destroyed is approximately eighteen thousand combat platforms of various types," Optimus interjected. "However, there is a significant likelihood a majority of these will be drone platforms, to better facilitate the heretics' search."

"Right," Hackett said with a grateful nod to the blank screen. "This whole thing has been too easy. We're missing something here, and I don't want any of our people to pay for it. Keep your eyes open and be ready for anything, but we still need to find the Conduit before any of those heretics do. Get to searching, and good luck. Vigilo Confido."

* * *

Commander Shepard hit the surface of Ilos with a soft grunt, his rifle automatically moving in a sweep to help cover his and Rex's section of the courtyard the squad found themselves in. His gaze darted from point to point, seemingly carrying along the tip of his rifle as he kept a wary eye out for any curious geth. Behind him, he could hear the rest of the more fragile members of the squad doing the same as they jumped down through the portal that was already swirling closed overhead.

"Any idea where to start?" the commander asked the resident expert without interrupting his vigil, easily turning it to a search for clues as well as hostiles. The clearing they had entered, one chosen by the asari due to 'feeling right' and no one having any better suggestions, was a literal ruin. A thick carpet of moss, vines, and detritus covered the ground in spongy layers, giving off a faint, wet squelch with every step. Five large statues of disturbingly familiar, vaguely humanoid, forms, each in varying states of decay, sat facing inward in a ring of small thrones that had been spaced evenly around the exact center of the clearing.

Around them, the carpet of organic mush spread to the very edge of the clearing, where it ran straight into the walls of the single massive building that encircled nearly the entire clearing. It was clear at a glance however, that the building had seen better days. Nearly half of it had collapsed into useless rubble, torn apart by the growth of an enormous... tree was the only word Shepard had for it. But calling it a tree would be akin to calling a chryssalid a bug. True, but it in no way captured the scale and sheer, terrifying majesty of the colossus that stretched hundreds, if not thousands, of meters into the sky. A small, irrational part of Shepard half expected it to come to life then, with another booming psionic voice that would tear into his mind just like the last unnaturally alien plant he'd encountered back on Feros.

The impression wasn't helped by its exterior. Rough black bark coated it, broken only by a network of visibly pulsing blue veins. Every few feet, jagged, leafless branches jutted out of its trunk at odd angles, spearing into floors, walls, and empty air alike with the inevitable implactitude of all flora. And to top it all off, judging by a rough estimate of the thickness and weight of the stone and metal they were supporting, each branch had a higher tensile strength than solid steel. Just what the hell was this thing?

"Not... exactly," Liara admitted, her voice simultaneously nervous, disappointed, breathy and excited. The commander spun to face her immediately, inwardly glad for the excuse to turn away from the subtly intimidating plant. She... wiggled, for lack of a better word, her way over to the centermost statue, the one directly opposite the small opening in the building around them, originally a road Shepard guessed, that broke the building's encirclement, and began examining it with barely-restrained childish enthusiasm. She had to visibly fight herself to turn away from it and look at Shepard, waving one hand at the ruined building behind them. "But this place is a government building of some sort. Any surviving archives will almost certainly be around here somewhere. We just need to find it."

"What are we looking for then?" he asked, somewhat bemused as Liara turned back to the statue before she'd even finished speaking.

She hummed distractedly as she brushed the built up detritus of millennia of neglect off the statue before clambering up onto its knees. She stared intently at the thing's chest, one hand gently tracing faint patterns in the stonework. "We need to determine the location of the archives," she said at length, her focus obviously not on the conversation. "Look for signs, images, anything that could tell us what this place was used for. That will let us know how close we are."

"And what are you doing?" Ashley asked archly, pointedly not voicing the question the rest of the squad was thinking: _What good does molesting the statue do?_.

"The greeters, as we call them," Liara answered cheerfully with a motion toward the statue, as if she hadn't even noticed the subtext of the question. Though on second thought, Shepard realized, as excited as she was, she probably didn't. "Are a symbol, a sign in and of themselves that identifies public structures and their purpose. That is how I know this was a government building before the Extinction."

"Then why do we need to search?" Garrus asked exasperatedly.

"Because it's been fifty thousand years," Liara said simply. Shepard would have called her tone dismissive and condescending if it wasn't so damn giddy. "And nature is not kind to unprotected structures. So much damage has been done to them that the exact meaning is most likely impossible to determine. I may be able to fin- Oh!"

Her voice cut off and her hands froze on the statue's chest for a brief second. A beat later, she exploded in motion, her hands flying all over the statue's surface before she threw herself from its lap and scrambled over to the collapsed ruin of the left-most one. Dark energy flared from her body as, piece by piece, her biotics sifted through the rubble. Shepard, along with the rest of the squad, couldn't help but stand back and haplessly watch her half-manic search through the broken pieces of a creepy as hell statue.

It was only a few seconds until she found what she was looking for though, and whirled around to face Shepard with a triumphant grin. "Found it!" she cried. "And we're in luck. Judging by what I found here and the sheer size of the building, this is the capitol for this city, possibly even the whole planet."

"Great," Shepard said, and meaning it too. The asari's enthusiasm was infectious. But not infectious enough to prevent his next question. "What does that mean?"

Liara kept grinning, her mood not tarnished in the slightest by the question. Instead, she just pointed out the wide opening leading out of the clearing. "It means that their archives are less than a kilometer that way and if the Conduit is a Prothean artifact, as Saren seems to believe, those records will almost certainly tell us where it is."

* * *

Shepard's eyes darted around the broken ruins and partially-intact buildings all around them as Liara led the squad toward their destination, but there was no sign that anything, geth or otherwise, had been through in centuries, if not millennia. And that included animals. It was as if, once the Protheans fell, nature itself recognized the city as a tomb.

Shepard shuddered at that thought, unable to fully suppress the instinctual nervousness that came just from standing in this dead city. The whole place, from the ruined buildings to the carpet of moss and vines underfoot, practically reeked of fallen majesty, dilapidated glory, and, most prominently, the price they would pay if they failed this mission. It was a humbling, and more than a little eerie, reminder.

Which was why Shepard was so relieved when, upon rounding the next corner, Liara gasped and threw herself back toward the squad with a cry of, "Geth!"

There was no time to react before a small rocket shot through the space she had been filling a moment before and exploded on the ground a few feet beyond. Shepard threw himself away from the rocket on instinct, inadvertently tackling Garrus at nearly the same instant it detonated. A small shockwave smacked at his feet and thighs, turning his dive into a semi-controlled tumble that carried both him and the turian behind him down to the ground.

"Anyone hurt?" Shepard asked a beat later as he climbed off Garrus and helped the turian to his feet. He cast a quick look around, but smoke and small pieces of burning moss drifted randomly through the air in a thick, blinding cloud, cutting down his visibility to only a few feet. Only the outlines of his squad on his hud could be clearly seen as they all answered in the negative.

"Good," he said simply, silently thankful for the building separating them from the geth and the time it bought them. "Liara, Garrus, with me. We're going up to the roof to take a look. Legion and Tali, see if you can sneak around and find a place to hit them from. The rest of you, be ready to move when I give the word."

Acknowledgments came back and the two with cloaking modules installed took off into the smoke, even as his archangel pack kicked on and sent him flying toward the roof of the building they sheltered behind, Liara right beside him. They landed lightly and crouched immediately, minimizing their profile as they made their way to the far side. A second later, Garrus' grappling hook pulled him over the lip of the roof and he crawled over to join them in looking over the street beyond. "That's... a lot of geth," he breathed quietly, a kind of quiet nervousness in his voice that Shepard hadn't heard before.

And it was all the harder to dismiss because his words were true. There was easily a score of troopers and destroyers scurrying around below them, hurriedly taking, or even assembling, defensive positions atop and along the side facing them of a surprisingly intact building, crowned by a large, round, four meter tall structure that he had no hope of identifying, only thirty meters or so further down the street from their perch. Worse, there were even more geth inside the building, and no way to tell just how many.

Part of Shepard wondered for a moment just what the geth were thinking. They had clearly seen Liara, and reacted quickly enough to shoot a goddamn rocket at her, but instead of searching for her, they were hunkering down and trying to turn this random building into a fortress. It didn't make any sense to him. Why would they set up shop here, of all places? Maybe they underestimated the destructive power of plasma weapons and thought it would better protect them? Or maybe Prothean architecture was just that tough?

Either way, he thought, it didn't matter. He'd have to be an idiot not to capitalize on their inaction.

"Garrus, we're on the pair with rockets on the roof, you take the left, I've got right," he ordered calmly. "Urdnot and Rex, when I say go, I want a rain of missiles on that building. Take it down to the foundat-"

"No!" Liara hissed quietly from her place at his elbow. "That's the archive! We can't risk damaging it!"

Shepard paused for a long moment. "Well, fuck," he said at length, his tone matter-of-fact. No wonder the geth weren't moving. "We're gonna have to do it the hard way the-"

The commander was cut off by a low-pitched, humming whine from somewhere overhead. He glanced up, even as Garrus' plasma sniper roared from his left. The bolt of plasma shot through the air and speared a geth drone in the middle of its charge straight toward them. It exploded in a brilliant gout of orange and emerald green flame that sent burning shrapnel raining down onto the dirt and broken concrete below.

The rest of the geth reacted with the inhuman speed and eerie synchronicity of networked synthetics, nearly instantly turning as one to face the building Shepard, Garrus and Liara sheltered on. The trio scurried back from the edge, forced to crawl by the withering barrage of gunfire that passed mere centimeters overhead. They didn't make it very far, though, before a pair of bone-shaking booms rang out as the rocket troopers on the far building opened fire, blowing massive holes in the walls of their hiding place and undermining the very floor beneath them.

"Get the rockets!" Shepard ordered as he hurriedly scrambled to a position where he could actually see them, ignoring the way the roof groaned underneath him. "Same targets!"

"On it!" Garrus shot back, his rifle already settling into place dead center on his target. In the span of a single heartbeat, both plasma snipers spat bolts of plasmic death that streaked over the rubble-strewn streets separating them from their targets. Shepard's lips quirked into a small, feral smile as the right side of his target's torso disappeared in a geyser of white fluid and molten metal before it fell limp less than a second before Garrus' target joined it.

Below them, Shepard could hear the roar of Wrex's heavy plasma whirring to life, but a sudden eruption of motion on the roof of the archive, mere meters from the corpse of his target, forced him to dismiss it. He watched, shocked and, one distant part of him absently noted, suddenly very worried, as the round structure crowning the building unfolded.

Four enormous legs, each thicker than he was at the shoulder and covered in enough armor to make Bane feel inadequate, stretched out from each corner of the thing and slammed into the roof with colossal force, sending out a solid wave of sound that seemed to swallow the noise of furious combat echoing up from the street below and left a pregnant, deadly silence in its wake. In this silence, the legs pushed, lifting its body up and making room for a long, serpentine neck topped with a streamlined head bearing the signature geth flashlight to unfold. The enormous geth walker, superficially reminiscent of the Armature, but easily at least twice the size, stood as a tall and menacing sentinel over the entire conflict.

"_Keelah_!" Tali's voice cried, shrill and borderline panicking. "Colossus!_"_

As if waiting for that signal, its head swivelled to look straight at Shepard and a chill ran down his spine. Small plates, eight at least, maybe more, in two rows along its back shifted, smoothly creating small gaps in its armor. And the commander had a very bad feeling he knew exactly what those gaps were for.

His heart beat once, loud and thunderous to his ears, then tongues of bright orange flame erupted from every single one of the holes. Shepard reacted on instinct. Raw, animal panic, unrestrained by thought or reason, sent a wave of sloppy, unfocused psionic force slamming into the walker even as the missiles it carried left their tubes.

The sudden slap of force, and that was all it truly was, staggered the colossus and, more importantly, threw off the missiles' targeting. The rocket propelled explosives flew randomly through the air, leaving erratic and nearly impossible to follow contrails as they tumbled wildly off course and ultimately exploded harmlessly amidst the surrounding ruins.

Shepard heaved a short sigh of a relief, internally echoing Garrus' elated cry, and threw himself into motion. He ducked and scrambled along the rooftop, doing everything he could to stay out of sight of the stupid thing even as his thoughts raced. They needed to take that thing out if they were to have any hope of winning this fight, and they needed to do it ten minutes ago. But how? he asked himself with a scowl. It was sitting directly on top of a vital resource, one they absolutely could not risk destroying, and it knew it. How the hell were they going to handle this?

Suddenly, he had an idea. An ingenious idea, if he did say so himself, one that pulled his lips into a sly, cold smirk. If its positioning was a problem, he'd just have to move it. "Urdnot, Rex," he called through the comm, and got a pair of clicks in response. "On my signal, I want all of your missiles in the air and heading for the road right in front of the archive. Liara, cover me."

Affirmatives came back acknowledging the order, so he nodded to himself and leapt out of cover, bending every ounce of his will into this one, single act. So focused was he, that he completely ignored the storm of bullets that filled the air around him, as well as the biotic barriers that sprang up to keep him safe. All he did notice was the river of purple streamers that burst from his forehead and streaked over to the colossus before he'd even fully gained his feet. In response, the colossus' head glimmered with dark energy as what had to be its main weapon prepared to fire with the use of powerful mass effect fields. The head reared back, like a snake preparing to strike, and Shepard _pulled_.

Stupendous force slammed into the rear of the colossus, throwing it into an uncontrolled tumble that carried it straight off the edge of the archive's roof. It flopped off the edge, right as its weapon fired, throwing its aim wildly off. There was a bright, almost blinding flash as a white beam burst from its head and slammed into the ground so far below. The earth shook and shards of rock and burning concrete were flung through the air by the resulting explosion, but the uncontrolled shot proved as harmless to the geth as it did to Shepard. The commander only distantly noticed however, instead keeping all of his focus on the second stage of his tactic.

"Now!" he barked into the comm, even as another stream of psionic force lashed out and plowed into the top of the walker, catapulting it toward the earth.

The colossus hit with a resounding thud that Shepard could feel even from his perch atop a two story building. There was a flash of brilliant blue, then the missiles came screaming in. The road below erupted into pandemonium, to his eyes becoming little more than a chaotic mess of fire and smoke that blotted out all sight of the walker and even most of the geth that had been defending the archive.

"Did that do it?" Garrus asked quietly in the ensuing calm, his taloned grip tight on his rifle as it periodically belched plasma at any geth that stuck its head out..

The smoke thinned, carried away by a small wind, and Shepard had to suppress a groan. "Of course not," he spat, glaring daggers at the bright glow of the biotic barrier that had sprung up above the fallen colossus and caught every single one of the missiles. "That would be too easy."

"We shall have to fix that then," Liara said gravely, carefully pulling herself to her feet. She set herself into a low stance while a fierce corona of dark energy flared out of her skin. She made a strange, undulating motion that rolled from her feet all the way to her fingertips, which sliced through the air in a whip-like motion. A tight spiral of biotic force, no thicker than Shepard's fist, shot from the tips of her fingers and slammed into the barrier half a heartbeat later.

A sharp, piercing whine filled the air, moments before the barrier shattered like glass. Thick shards of swiftly dissipating biotic energy drifted gently through the air before vanishing completely less than a second later, the mystics powering it simply unable to maintain its cohesion after such a decisive blow.

Shepard could hear the distinctive roar of plasma fire start back up, seizing the initiative that she had bought them, but he could only send the bookish asari an astounded glance. She shrugged sheepishly. "Mother insisted I learn self-defense," she explained semi-defensively.

His lips curled into a tight smile. Really, he should have expected something like that after what she pulled on Feros. "Nice job," he said to her as he turned back to the fight. "Now you're on mystic duty. You see one, make it dead."

"I will!" she agreed with a sharp nod, and scurried further along the edge of the roof to begin her hunt.

Down below, the now unprotected walker jerkily worked its way to its feet under a steady rain of plasma, but its shields flared and kept it protected, no matter what hit it. The glowing green barrier moved in a bizarre swirl that Shepard had never seen before that immediately shunted aside every single bolt of plasma thrown at it. It was unreal, and more than that, he had no idea how to deal with it. How the hell can you take down a shield that doesn't even get hit?

The commander growled under his breath, his mind racing for ways to deal with this seemingly invulnerable engine of destruction, even as he shuffled around the rooftop raining pinpoint fire on the more... squishy infantry below. His thoughts were interrupted however, when Tali's voice came over the com. "Keep the colossus distracted! We've got a plan!"

Before another word could be said, an invisible quarian came flying out of an alley almost a block past the the archive building, well behind the geth defenses. Shepard watched out of the corner of his eye as she charged down the street on a collision course for the now mostly-stable colossus. He scowled at the sight, but fought down the urge to tell her off. She wouldn't do anything this recklessly stupid without a reason and a way to get through it alive.

He hoped.

She reached the colossus in a matter of seconds and immediately scrambled up one of its legs. The spider module in her armor was working overtime as she crawled along the surface of the enormous walker all the way up to the base of its neck, and the colossus didn't seem to notice a thing. Then, suddenly, Tali was visible again. The orange glow of her omnitool blared triumphantly against the matte black of the colossus and dull gray of her armor, catching the eye and alerting everything in the area of exactly where she was. The hand encased in the orange hologram shot forward and seemed to sink into the geth's armor, almost up to the elbow, leaving the quarian laying almost prone atop the gigantic geth, and, fortunately, behind its shield.

The colossus froze abruptly, even as the infantry platforms reacted to her sudden appearance. Thick streams of napalm flew from a pair of destroyers, one on either side of the walker. The flaming jelly slid right past the colossus' shield like it wasn't there and covered the back of the walker in a layer of blazing, white-hot flame.

Shepard felt a pang of irrational worry at the sight. Titan Armor was rated to survive temperatures a hell of a lot higher than any jelly could produce, and he knew it, but he couldn't, and wouldn't even if he could, stop the part of him that wanted to protect her. He kept an anxious eye on the flames and Tali's readout on his hud, even as a lance of psionic force slammed into one of her attackers and tore open its pack, spilling burning napalm on it and every geth near it. Armor ran like molten wax and synthetic muscle burned in blue-white fire as the geth and its nearest neighbor collapsed, the platforms unable to move as their musculature was seared away.

Then the still-burning colossus started to move. One of its legs lashed out and slammed into the surviving destroyer, driving it into the ground and crushing its torso underfoot as the giant walker stomped on it. The telltale glow of the mass effect burst out of its head as it tilted forward, shifting the thing's aim down and right into the heart of the geth infantry. The geth immediately tried to scatter, but the colossus didn't give them the time. Most only managed a single step before a thick beam of solid white shot from its head and speared into a destroyer in the center of the formation.

The platform vanished in a massive, earthshaking explosion of naked energy and thunderous noise. The nearest geth platforms died instantly, their armor seared and systems fried by the enormous surge of heat and power. Further out, the air was filled with a maelstrom of superheated shrapnel and shards of rock that tore through armor as easily as it did synthetic muscle, flooding the ground with thick streams of white fluid as geth platforms were viciously torn apart and cast aside like broken chew toys. Without the slightest hesitation, the few surviving geth outside the archive immediately turned and ran, making a mad dash for the perceived safety of the building and away from their traitorous heavy weapons platform.

"Haha!" Tali crowed triumphantly over the comm, even as she lay amidst the burning napalm atop a hacked enemy walker. Under her direction, the colossus lashed out at the fleeing geth, launching powerful blows from its massive legs the instant any of them came within reach. "It worked! Legion, I could kiss you!"

"That will not be necessary, Creator Tali'Zorah," Legion replied evenly, almost chastisingly, as the two survivors of the colossus' sudden betrayal, and the rest of the squad's cleanup efforts, finally made into the archive building. "Let us focus on the heretics."

"Ye-" she began, only to cut off with a yelp as a lance of biotic energy shot past the colossus' neck and passed by mere inches from her head. She flinched violently and pulled herself back behind its bulk and called over her shoulder, "Little help!"

Immediately, Shepard was tracing the biotic attack back to its source, but he had only just laid eyes on the mystic through one of the archive's first floor windows when the telltale dancing glow of a biotic warp slammed into it. Chaotically shifting forces danced along its skin, rending and tearing great, gaping holes through armor and flesh alike in an explosive display of raw power. Thick white fluid surged out of the new holes, spraying out like the mystic was the galaxy's most macabre firehose and painting the walls and floor around it a nearly impenetrable white until the platform could take no more and it collapsed bonelessly.

"That was the last of the mystics," Liara announced as she ducked back into cover. "By my count, at least."

"Good," Shepard said, not taking his eyes away from the archive building. He panned his rifle all over it, but the geth had seemingly taken the opportunity provided by the distraction and retreated. He couldn't see any sign of them any longer. "Urdnot, Rex, and Ashley, clear the building. Check your fire and don't do any more damage to it than you have to. We'll watch your back."

"On it boss," Ashley said as the trio dashed up the street under the protective watch of the squad's snipers.

"Garrus and Liara, keep an eye out for geth reinforcements. Tali, you and Legion are helping me make sure none of the heretics survive coming out of the building."

"Yes, Shepard," Tali replied easily, the giddy flush of successfully executing such a bold move still evident in her voice. The colossus turned and stomped its way over to the far side of the building. "I'll watch this side."

The commander nodded to himself and activated his archangel pack before darting off the roof of the building that had served him so well and landing atop another ruin closer to the archive, where he could properly see down the alleyway beside it. He settled into position right as Wrex reached the front door of the archive. "I'm in position, go when ready."

The krogan nodded once and swung himself around the corner and into the archive proper. Rex charged in beside him with Ashley right behind. All three swept the foyer for targets, unwilling to advance before knowing the rear was safe. "Clear!" Wrex announced a beat later, and with that, all three disappeared into the building.

The next few minutes passed painfully slowly, the tension thrumming through him refusing to abate even in the face of the dull monotony of overwatch. He listened intently to the chatter as the trio steadily fought their way room by room through the archive building, clearing it out one geth at a time. Finally though, after several eternities of anxious waiting had passed, Ashley's voice addressed him directly over the comm.

"We're done, Commander," she announced with evident relief. "Found what looks like the main record room too. Lots of broken equipment and a VI that's speaking gibberish at least. Hopefully Liara can make sense of it."

"Good job," Shepard said, echoing her relief. He glanced around before focusing on the quarian still riding the giant geth. "Same goes to everyone, but especially you Tali. How the hell did you pull that off?"

"Ah, it's not that impressive," she said modestly. "Legion did the hard part."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "I'd never be able to control this thing if Legion wasn't containing the heretic programs already inside it. He used my omnitool to establish a remote connection and kept them out of the way while I rerouted the motor and weapon controls to my omnitool."

Shepard didn't bother to fight the proud grin that etched itself on his face. It was encouraging as hell to see Tali working so closely with the geth. "Nicely done, both of you. What can we do with it now?"

"We recommend disabling it," Legion's voice interrupted, pulling a frown from the commander. The geth seemed to anticipate his distaste for the idea, for it explained itself immediately. "The heretic programs inside are adapting and will likely soon penetrate the security we placed around the compromised systems. We do not recommend being in its vicinity when they accomplish this."

"Yea..." Shepard drawled slowly, inwardly worrying over just what Legion considered 'soon'. "That would be bad. Can you disable it Tali?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted with a frown. The colossus lowered itself down to the ground and she glanced toward the roof of one of the buildings on her side of the archive, where, Shepard absently noted, his hud marked Legion's location. "Any ideas, Legion?"

"Yes," the geth replied. With no further warning, the armor on the back of the colossus suddenly split straight down the middle. Tali yelped and swung herself around until she was laying on the thing's neck, all the while careful not to pull her arm out of the hole she rested it in.

As soon as she was out of the way, the colossus opened, for lack of a better word. The armored plates on its back shifted out and up in a motion somewhere between the blooming of a flower and the opening of the wings of a beetle. Inside it, thick tubing dotted with glowing highlights every few inches ran in an orderly chaos over widely varying machines of all shapes, sizes and purposes.

"Where do we start?" Shepard asked the resident geth. He was pretty sure he was supposed to just start smashing things, but he'd prefer it if the colossus didn't explode with Tali on it.

By way of response, Legion hefted his rifle and shot a globe of plasma deep into the heart of the machinery, instantly vaporizing huge swathes of the delicate innards. Shepard threw himself back with an oath of surprise and fell on his ass as clouds of white steam and acrid smoke billowed out of the colossus. The walker seemed to deflate with an almost pitiful whine and the various lights and highlights along it dimmed and died, giving colorful testament to the way the limbs, and even the armor on its back, collapsed limply. It slumped weakly to the ground and lay still, utterly dead.

Shepard turned an arch look on Legion. "A little warning, next time?" The question was enthusiastically echoed by Tali, who had thrown herself from the thing the instant Legion had fired and was now glaring daggers at him.

"Yes, Shepard-Commander," the geth replied without emotion, stoically ignoring the quarian's ire.

He eyed Legion, unable to tell if that had been serious or not, but eventually he snorted. The geth didn't understand sarcasm at the best of times, he wasn't going to use it now. At least the stupid thing was dead now. "Whatever," he dismissed it and turned away. A wave of his hand brought Liara and Garrus down to join them. "Let's just get in there and see what these archives have to say about the Conduit."

* * *

"Wow..." Liara breathed quietly as she and Shepard strode into the room Ashley had reported. Her head spun like it was on a swivel, her eyes desperately feasting on the xeno-archaeological find of the century like a starving maiden on Janiris. Long shelves stretched in even rows throughout most of the room, the order to their placement broken only by the obvious signs of the passage of time. Rust ran thickly over the shelves, almost entirely eating away at the metal in several cases while thick flora, vines and roots primarily, wove intricate patterns around the metal frame before pushing around and, to Liara's great dismay, occasionally into several of the hermetically sealed crates that were of incalculable historic value. Just the thought of how much knowledge had been lost alongside the integrity of the dozen or so broken crates she could see was almost enough to pull a scowl out of her.

But she couldn't find it in herself to truly be upset. Not when so much more had survived. By Athame, she was finding it hard not to giggle like a schoolgirl and dance a jig. This was the most intact Prothean archive she had ever even heard of, let alone seen. And there was a working VI!

Well, not really working per se, she hastily amended to herself as she glanced over to the hologram, dismissing the corpse of the geth on the floor beside it. The VI's projector had clearly been damaged at some point, likely by the plant growth, leaving it little more than a vague bipedal shape hidden in a storm of orange-white static, and she would be truly astounded if more than a small fraction of its many delicate electronics had survived the millennia without maintenance. That fraction, however, was more than any previous Prothean researcher had ever reported.

Goddess, she had never dared dream of a find of this scale. The things she could learn here! It would revolutionize the galaxy's understanding of the Protheans! And _she_ was the one who found it! Not Matriarch Lisyna, not Rysia Carin, but 'poor, delusional' Liara T'soni and her 'youthful' theories! Oh she couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when they find out about this. They'd be-

"-ara!" A sharp voice, a hint of reprimand in its tone, suddenly tore her from her thoughts. She flinched in surprise and jerked her head around toward the source, only to come face-to-chest with an impatiently waiting Commander Shepard. "Focus on the job," he chided her, not unkindly. "You can come back to oggle the place once we've found the Conduit."

"R-right," she said with a nod and a flush of embarrassment. She wasn't on a dig, she reminded herself with a shake of her head. Now was not the time to daydream. Lives depended on her discovering the Conduit's location as quickly as possible. She took a deep breath and took one last look around the room, paying special attention to the corner of her mind where the Cipher resided, but nothing stood out as particularly likely to have what she needed.

She glanced at the VI and muttered a quiet prayer to Athame that its interface components remained more intact than its projector. "I will need to consult with the VI," she said to Shepard. "With luck, it will at least be able to tell us where to start in these records."

"Sounds good, just hold on a sec," he replied before turning toward the krogan looming in the background of the room. "Urdnot, you and Rex head out and set up on overwatch with the others outside, make sure the geth don't sneak up on us." Wrex rumbled his agreement and shoved himself off the wall, but froze when a wreath of purple light dropped both of the geth corpses in the room at his feet with a small splash of white fluid.

"Carnifex?" he half growled by way of question.

"Drop these somewhere else on your way out," the commander ordered. "Just in case they're intact enough to listen in. Call me paranoid, but I'd rather not risk them overhearing anything."

Wrex rolled his eyes and grumbled under his breath, but he hefted both of the ruined corpses onto his back and plodded out the door, the commander's robotic varren on his heels. Shepard turned back to Liara. "Alright, now that that's taken care of, do you need anything else from us?"

"No, Shepard," she said with a small shake of her head and a small, eager smile.

"Alright. In the meantime, Ashley, you take the far end, I'll start over here. Go through the boxes and see if you can find anything that looks like a map or something. Start with the open crates."

"And be _careful_," Liara insisted worriedly as Gunnery Chief Williams made her way toward the far side of the room. "These records are fifty thousand years old. Even the best preservation techniques will not stop them from being very, very fragile."

Chief Williams grunted her agreement, which did little to assuage the tight knot of worry in the archaeologist's chest, and disappeared into the shelves a moment later, while Shepard nodded at her and turned to rummaging through the nearest shelf. Liara watched him anxiously for a moment as he pawed at the boxes, until he sent her a look over his shoulder. She flushed again as, even without being able to see his face, that glance silently rebuked her for failing to perform her duties.

She turned away, trying to will away the blood in her cheeks, and determinedly strode over to the VI's hologram. The projection flickered sharply as she drew within arm's reach and began to speak. Its voice was deep and resonant, giving an even sharper edge to the harsh, nonsensical syllables it spoke that she understood as easily as if it had spoken High Thessian. She couldn't stop the small, giddy smile that spread across her lips at that. It had been weeks and she still couldn't quite get over being able to actually _speak_ Prothean!

"Gree...tings -ser" the VI said haltingly, its voice randomly pausing or descending into brief bursts of static, proof of the corruption of its audio files. "What - yo- reque...st?"

"The Conduit," Liara said, inwardly marvelling at the Prothean words rolling off her tongue. "What is it? Where is it located?"

"Err-. Cond-it data cor...rupt. Would - li- to procee...d?"

"Yes," Liara answered with an annoyed frown. She had known it was too much to hope that the information would all survive intact, but it was still disappointing to hear confirmation of it.

"Pro-ct Cond-it. Super-sor: Ks- Ishan. Lo...cation: Fac-ity 112-. Purpose: .. Err-" The VI's hologram flickered violently then flashed a deep, warning purple. Words flew across the display in a rush, far too fast for her to make any sense of, for a few short seconds. Then the projector practically exploded in an enormous geyser of sparks. Liara instinctively threw herself away from the sudden danger with a yelp of surprise that brought the other two in the room running.

"Liara!" Shepard barked as he rushed over. He crouched down beside her prone form and asked, "You alright?"

"I am fine," she replied, taking his proffered hand and climbing back to her feet. She slapped her hands against her armor to knock off any debris from the floor and shook her head. "Just surprised is all."

"What happened?" Gunnery Chief Williams asked. "I heard something explode."

Liara scowled. "The VI's information on the Conduit was corrupted," she explained in a sour tone. "When I accessed it, something went wrong with it and the projector exploded."

Shepard cocked his head then turned and crouched beside the broken remains of the VI's projector. He examined it for a few moments before shaking his head with a sigh. "Not just the projector," he said aloud. "Looks like it was caused by a power surge from somewhere deeper in the system. I couldn't tell you what actually broke, but the good money's that this isn't turning on again without extensive repairs. Maybe not even then."

"I had assumed as much," Liara agreed with a sigh. If only she hadn't needed to find the Conduit so badly, she could have been more gentle with it. Goddess, why do the geth have to ruin her best finds? First Therum and now this. It was as if they had it out for her in particular.

She pushed aside that thought for now. She'd been distracted enough already. She cleared her throat to grab the humans' attention from where it had wandered and continued. "It did last long enough for me to learn something about where the Conduit was being stored however."

That got their attention immediately. "Where?" Shepard demanded as he straightened from his crouch.

"The VI called it 'Facility 112-_something_'," she answered him immediately. "But I am unsure precisely where that is." She glanced between them. "Were either of you able to locate a map like you planned?"

"I found _something_," Gunnery Chief Williams said, even as Shepard shook his head negatively. She turned and disappeared into the shelves for a moment before reappearing with one of the crates, seal freshly broken, in hand. "But I'm not sure if it's a map or what."

The gunnery chief gently set down the crate and opened it without fanfare, setting the lid aside. In it sat large piles of various papers folded into small, tight rectangles and packed into the crate as tightly as the Protheans could have managed, though one of the piles had fallen into disarray somewhere along the line. The human reached in and gingerly plucked out one of the sheets from the disordered pile and just as gently unfolded it over the lid of the crate.

Sharp, angular lines raced along the surface of the document in hard, interlocking patterns that described esoteric, nearly incomprehensible designs of varying sizes and shapes. For a long moment, Liara had no idea what to make of it. It was so utterly alien that she could barely follow it.

The longer she looked at it though, the easier it became. Her eyes started running along it purely on instinct, tracing patterns she didn't even consciously recognize. Several seconds passed as she racked her brain for what this could possibly be for before, like a bolt of lightning, she realized what she was missing.

"Commander, can my armor take pictures?" she asked abruptly. "That I can access here?"

"Uh, yea," Shepard answered, his tone bewildered. He gave her a brief explanation for the mechanism and finished by asking, "But what good will pictures of this thing do?"

"The Protheans had quadnocular vision," she answered distractedly as she moved into position and took her first picture. "Four eyes, in other words. We lack the requisite perception to properly view this." The humans made vague noises of understanding and the room settled into an awkward silence as Liara's head darted around while she took three more pictures. Once done, she activated her mic. "EDI, I'm uploading some photos to you. All four are different angles on the same subject. Can you combine them for me?"

"Of course, Liara," the AI replied instantly. "Receiving the images now." Liara settled in to impatiently wait, her eyes continuing to trace over the piece of paper and slowly but surely picking away at its secrets. She had only been waiting for a few seconds when EDI replied though. "Done. Sending the result to you now. Also, Commander, be advised that the battle in orbit has been resolved. Additional ground forces will be added to the search."

"Thank you," the archaeologist said, ignoring Shepard's conversation with EDI in favor of studying the image as it appeared on her hud. She blinked dumbly in surprise, unable to do anything but stare at it for a single long second. Then she poured over it once more before bursting into laughter. Goddess, what were the odds?

"What?" Gunnery Chief Williams asked bewilderedly. "What is it?"

Liara glanced over, her chuckles slowly dying, and said, "Ex, excuse me, I was not expecting that."

"Expecting what?" Shepard asked, his voice just as confused as the other human's. "All I can really tell is that it's a map of some sort."

"That the gunnery chief would choose exactly the right map," Liara said, a hint of laughter still in her voice. "This is a map of every military installation on the planet." Her hand came down and she tapped several different points on the paper. "Including several possible matches for our target."

"Perfect!" Shepard exclaimed happily. He reached over and pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Way to go Liara! Can you get us coordinates for them all?"

"In a few minutes, yes," she said as he released her.

"Do it and get them to EDI," he ordered, starting to calm down from the surge of excitement. "But first, where's the closest one?"

She took a few seconds to study the map and compare it to the positional readout on her hud before replying. "It is a large underground bunker whose only entrance is approximately two kilometers north-northwest of our current position."

"That's our target then. EDI, get word to the Captain. His boys can handle the others."

* * *

The run from the archive to the bunker Liara had found passed quickly and mercifully uneventfully for Shepard. The asari had led the squad through the rubble-strewn streets and fallen ruins at a brisk pace, moving as quickly as he dared push her through potentially hostile territory, and they failed to see even a hint of heretic geth. The commander took it as a good sign, despite the vocal protests of a small portion of his mind. Especially once Liara slowed to a stop at the top of a steep incline that led several meters down, where an enormous, incredibly solid-looking inverted trapezoidal door had been set into a wall of solid concrete and steel.

"This should be it," Liara said, her voice torn between excitement and nervousness.

"Can you get it open?" Shepard asked, waving hand signals to the other snipers and Wrex as he did so. The others immediately accepted the order and moved into position, where they set up on overwatch for any geth patrols.

"I believ-" Liara began, only to cut herself off when a blinding flash of bright blue washed over the area. Shepard flinched as the light speared into his eyes for the small fraction of a second his armor took to compensate for it. "Goddess! What was that?"

"Somebody tell me that wasn't what I think it was," Ashley demanded in the same moment.

"Heh," Wrex snorted into the slowly building silence of dawning realization and horror. Another wave of blinding light painted the area in obscene punctuation of his mirthless chuckle. "Not a chance. That was the Conduit, or I'm a salarian."

"Which means we are out of time! Liara, get that door open!" Shepard snapped before turning on his comm and dismissing the asari from his thoughts. "EDI! Di-"

"I saw it Commander, but it does not appear to have had any effect on anything I can detect."

"Maybe that means it's still charging then," he said, hoping but not quite believing it, as another flash blinded him. "Can you find it?"

"I am unable to locate its source," the AI answered, a distinct note of annoyance in her voice. "But I believe you are the nearest ground team."

"Good, let the Ad-" Shepard's voice was suddenly drowned out by a deafening roar as the door at the base of the ramp exploded without warning, flinging a raging geyser of flame and shrapnel out of the depression and up into the still air. Well honed and deeply ingrained instinct flung him away from the inferno the ramp had become, and he landed heavily on his chest. A thump and a soft, feminine whimper of pain sounded in the pregnant silence following the blast as a limp form was launched off the lip of the ramp and slammed to an abrupt halt against a crumbling wall across the street.

"Liara!" Shepard barked worriedly. He threw himself back to his feet, but before he could take so much as a single step, the telltale chitter of geth platforms echoed out of the thick smoke that filled the ramp. The commander immediately scrambled for cover, cursing vehemently under his breath. "Ashley! Heads up!"

Without waiting for a response, a surge of purple light lashed out and lifted the asari into the air, before it flung her as gently as he could manage toward where the closest thing the squad had to a battlefield medic had taken cover. Ashley caught her with a surprised oath and nearly fell over, but managed to recover and set her down in cover in the same motion.

The next instant, four shapes exploded out of the smoke and arced through the air overhead. "Incoming hoppers," Legion warned calmly, his voice barely audible over the whine of his rifle's discharge. One of the flying geth platforms was speared by the bolt of plasma and sent careening off course in a shower of sparks and half-molten metal, but not even the geth's preternatural reaction speeds could catch any of the other three before they disappeared into the ruins behind the squad.

Shepard's was forced to set aside any worries about them however, when a solid wall of destroyers came charging out of the smoke a beat later. They stampeded up the ramp only meters away from his hiding place, belching waves of blindingly bright flame and showers of shotgun pellets as they came. Burning gel settled over damn near everything in sight, filling the air with thick plumes of black smoke and turning the small stretch of road into a scene straight out of hell.

There was no time to think or plan, only to react. Almost without thought, a telekinetic field blanketed the area, and he regretted it the second it formed. Fires roared and smoke billowed as waves of psionic force seized the hot, agitated air and whipped it into a churning maelstrom of untameable fury. The instant he realized what was about to happen, he tried to stop it by releasing the field, but it was far too late. The convection current had already formed, and powerful, chaotic winds rushed in through gaps in the broken ruins to answer its call. The firestorm instantly became a raging inferno, gorging on the ever-increasing winds of its own creation in a self-perpetuating cycle that no man or god could hope to break.

In a matter of seconds, his vision and even his hearing had vanished, consumed like so much chaff in the blaze. The destroyers disappeared behind impenetrable sheets of black smoke and dancing flames taller than he was. Immediately, he tried to consult his armor's sensor suite, only to find it packed full of static and garbage data from the geth's ECM and he realized, with a sick sensation of dread, that the geth had pre-empted him. They had planned for this. They had wanted him to do exactly what he had, to utterly blind himself and his squad. And he had walked right into it.

Sulphurous cursing and self-recrimination raged through his thoughts, but he refused to compound his mistake by letting it paralyze him. He was better than that, damnit, and now he had to prove it.

The first step in that process was to move. He wasn't stupid enough to think the geth hadn't marked his position before the fire started, and it was only a matter of time before one of those hoppers got into position to do something about it. Hell, with his luck, they were probably drawing a bead on his head even as he dithered. So with that cheery thought, he shoved off the rubble he sheltered behind and threw himself blindly into the inferno.

Fire licked at his waist, but he barely noticed. The layers of vahlenite and carbon fiber in his Titan Armor, designed to protect him from the unholy heat of plasma bolts, ensured he didn't feel a thing. The far more pressing problem was the smoke. The billowing veil hung thick in the air, churned into a chaotic mess by the constant, howling winds that fanned the flames ever higher. After only moments, any reference points he may once have used to determine his position had vanished into the chaotic swirls of black and orange that had enveloped him. All he could see, the only constants in the roaring firestorm his world had become, were the frantically moving markers that represented his teammates on his hud.

Suddenly, that changed when the hulking shape of a geth destroyer came barrelling out of the smoke to his left in utter silence. Flames wreathed the destroyer's form for a brief second, changing its flat red paint into something far more demonic. The sight reached straight past rationality and understanding and plunged straight into the most primal instincts of the human brain. Before he had even consciously recognized the new threat, he had flinched in mid-step, sending himself tumbling away from the looming geth.

The geth's shotgun roared and belched a handful of deadly shards, even as ingrained responses kicked in and his body turned what should have been an ungainly belly-flop into a mostly smooth roll. A single pellet, the only one of the geth's shot he didn't manage to avoid, skittered off the armor on his calf with a spark and the momentum it imparted turned his roll once more into a graceless tumble.

He landed heavily on his back, but he was already bringing his rifle to bear. Nearly the same instant his shoulders hit the ground, his finger tightened on the trigger and sent a spear of bright green plasma roaring toward the destroyer. At that distance, there was no way to dodge, no time for even a geth to react, before a bolt the size of his fist containing more energy than the raging fire in which he stood slammed into its chest.

The geth's shields flared and died in the same instant, the momentary flicker of pale green against the backdrop of smoke the only evidence of their desperately futile attempt. Metal warped and crumpled under the force imparted by the plasma strike, even as it ran in rivers under the unfathomable heat. Delicate electronics inside the geth's torso shattered in a shower of sparks or were seared into their housings, all while great plumes of white steam poured out of the new, enormous hole taking up most of the geth's chest. The light in its eye dimmed instantly and the destroyer dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

At the same time, a sniper round came flying out of the smoke and slammed into his shoulder. The momentum imparted by the round threw his upper torso back against the ground and sent up a flurry of sparks, but the angle of the shot and the curvature of his armor meant that was all that happened before it deflected into the ground beside his ear.

Without taking the time to think, let alone silently thank the designers of Titan Armor, he started rolling. It didn't matter where he was going, so long as it was somewhere else. Before he'd even finished his first rotation, a trio of rapid impacts sounded from where he'd lain only moments before, and he couldn't stop the sigh of relief that came when the shots didn't follow him.

In that brief moment of respite, he had to give it to them. The geth had managed one hell of a trap here. With the destroyers as simultaneous spotters, attackers, and bait, and a smoke screen to prevent counter attacks, the hoppers had free reign over the battlefield. It was a frighteningly brilliant tactical move.

With a shake of his head, he shoved the thought aside and shot back to his feet. He could admire their ingenuity after he killed them. He'd just have to find them first. But how?

This whole scenario was the geth ruthlessly exploiting every weakness he and his squad had. How on Earth were they supposed to be able to counter this?

"Enough of this," Wrex's frustrated and throaty growl cut through the commander's thoughts like a knife. "Brace yourselves!"

Shepard's eyes went wide, even as he threw himself against the nearest wall. What the hell was the crazy lizard up to now?

That question was answered in spectacular fashion before he even finished thinking it. The first sign was the thickening of the smoke and the way visibility dropped from a few meters to nanometers in a fraction of a second. His entire world dropped away to solid, impenetrable blackness.

The second sign was the impact that slammed into his side like a solid punch. He bucked and was nearly thrown from the wall he leaned against, but caught himself at the last second. As soon as he stopped moving, a nearly solid wall of bright biotic-blue light forced its way around him, reluctantly parting around the surface of his armor like he was being dipped in molasses.

The third and final sign was the nearly complete absence of smoke left in the wake of the biotic wave. The fires continued to burn and a thick haze was already returning over the battlefield, but for those first few, brief instants, the air was clear.

Not one to let such an opportunity go, the commander's gaze bounced around the field as quickly as he could, flagging the position of every geth he could set his eyes on, even while the marks on his hud informed him that Garrus was doing the same. Quickly, and poorly, aimed bolts of plasma went flying downrange with every target, but he was more interested in scoping the battlefield while he had the chance than killing the geth.

That's what Wrex was for.

He watched out of his peripheral vision as the krogan charged into the fray with a wordless cry of fury the very instant the geth were revealed, utterly ignoring the storm of plasma and bullets that erupted all around him. With his riot shield held before him to absorb its fire, he barrelled right into the chaos and plowed into the nearest geth with all the force of a speeding truck.

The shield spluttered and died from the impact, but the destroyer was sent reeling. A single, smooth motion swung the barrel of his heavy plasma into its chest. Plasma burst from the gun and bored into the destroyer's torso, where it threw molten shrapnel and thick puffs of white steam flying through the air. Wrex completed his swing and threw the geth corpse away from him before, in the same motion, turning and charging at his next target.

Then Shepard was abruptly forced to dismiss the krogan from his thoughts by a rustle of white he caught out of the corner of his eye and the sudden shriek of his instincts. Heeding the call, he threw himself forward and just barely dodged the fist-sized beam of red light that streaked through where his head had been less than a second earlier.

He turned his dive into a roll and swiftly got his feet back under him, but when he whirled to face it, his attacker was already fading back into the swiftly reforming haze of smoke.

"Oh no you don't!" he snarled angrily, both shaken and incensed by how close that had actually come to ending him. His right hand left his rifle and, with fingers curled in an invisible grip, lashed out toward the barely-visible form in the smog. Long streamers of purple light blasted out of his hand and latched onto his target at the speed of thought. His hand tightened into a fist and he pulled his arm back with a shout. "Get over here!"

In perfect time with the gesture, the enormous white form of his attacker came flying out of the haze in a graceless tumble, giving Shepard his first ever glimpse of an intact geth prime. He grinned ferally as the prime slammed into the ground with a crunch and bounced back up into the smoke-filled air, its gun clattering from its grip in the process.

The next instant, a spear of purple light slammed into it from above, throwing it into the ground with tremendous force. It landed deep in the heart of one of the many fires and its form was consumed instantly, sheltered from his view by the waist-high flames. The next second, sharp, echoing cracks, loud enough to be heard even over the roar of the flames, rang out as the prime's armor proved unable to resist the awesome power brought to bear against it.

Suddenly, there was a flash and the next thing Shepard knew, he was lying flat on his back, over a meter away from where he had started, staring up into roiling black smoke and he felt like he'd been kicked by a mule. "The hell?" he muttered dazedly.

"You were within the blast radius when the prime's power cells suffered a catastrophic containment failure, most likely induced by overheating," Legion's voice answered his question as a three-fingered hand burst from the smoke around him, grabbed his armor and helped haul him out of the fire and back onto his feet. When he was standing firmly once more, the geth released him and took a step back before announcing to the whole squad, "We can detect no further heretic platforms in the immediate vicinity."

"Thank God," Ashley nearly moaned in relief.

"Good," Shepard echoed the sentiment. That was not a fight he wanted to repeat anytime soon. "But before we start celebrating, let's get out of here before reinforcements show up and we need to give an encore performance."

That thought had the entire squad, even Wrex, hurrying for the tunnel entrance.

* * *

"Please tell me we're not going to be running down this," Garrus asked with an almost petulant lilt as the squad finally found their way out of the thick smoke and into the tunnel. He stopped at the base of the ramp leading in and cast an exaggeratedly disparaging look around.

Shepard stepped up beside him, took one look down the tunnel and found himself in complete agreement with the turian. To either side of them, thirty meter tall walls stretched laser-straight out into the distance, running so far out that he couldn't even begin to glimpse the end of it, even with the strongest magnification his helmet allowed. And it wasn't a lack of light that prevented it either. The regularly placed skylights, only a few of which still bore any sign they'd once been filled with glass, that ran along the ceiling the whole way down ensured that much.

"Probably not," Shepard muttered his agreement before glancing over his shoulder and raising his voice. "But first, Liara, how far are we from that facility?"

"Wha- Oh!" The asari exclaimed as she pulled her attention away from the strange oblong cylinders that sprouted randomly out of the walls. She paused briefly, probably re-examining the image EDI had created, before continuing. "We are in it, Commander. The door behind us was the entrance."

Shepard frowned. Just how big was this place? "How far are we from the Conduit then?"

"I am unsure," Liara said in a distractedly frustrated tone. "It is most likely in an offshoot from this passageway, but there are no interior details on the map. All I can say for sure is that this passageway is no more than fourteen kilometers long."

Ashley gave an impressed whistle. "That's one hell of a distance."

"Quite," Liara agreed. "It is the entire width of the compound."

"We're gonna need a ride then," Shepard said. He stepped off the base of the ramp and was momentarily surprised by the sloshing as his foot broke the surface of the perfectly clear ankle-deep water that covered the floor of the tunnel. He shook off the distraction and called the _Normandy_. "EDI, send Mako to these coordinates, we need a ride."

"At once, Commander," the AI replied immediately.

The familiar purple swirl of a wormhole burst to life mere feet in front of Shepard and swiftly grew into a gaping hole in reality that disgorged the squad's TIV before vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Mako gently lowered itself into the shallow water and the hatch in its rear swung open before it had even fully settled. Shepard climbed in, content in the knowledge that the splashing of footsteps behind him meant the others were right behind him.

"Garrus, take the turret," he called over his shoulder as he settled into the driver's seat. "I'll drive."

"On it," the turian replied. He clambered into the increasingly cramped confines of the TIV's interior before plopping into the seat on Shepard's right and immediately laid hands on the gun's controls. A soft whir sounded as he quickly synced the gun's camera feeds to his armor and ran through its startup calibrations.

Mere seconds later, Wrex finished squeezing his bulk into the transport and the hatch slid smoothly closed. The dashboard before Shepard flashed green, declaring Mako's readiness to move, and with a few quick commands, it pulled itself out of the water with a quiet hum. Then, accompanied by the quiet whine of its gravity drive, the TIV sped down the tunnel.

The next several minutes passed in uneventful silence, no one willing to break the nervous tension that had settled over them all. They were getting close to the end of this whole debacle, and every one of them could sense it. The end-game lay ahead, and it could potentially decide the fate of the entire _galaxy_. That was a cross Shepard wasn't sure he could bear. If he fucked this up, he would be personally responsible for the deaths of _trillions_.

He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but that thought scared the piss out of him. He had enough issues with a kill count in the thousands, how the hell would he deal with one literally a billion times higher?

Assuming he survived, of course. It wasn't like Nazara, if not the Reapers in general, wasn't already planning to personally murder him after all.

"So," Ashley's voice reached in and broke his thoughts out of their increasingly depressing spiral with an almost audible snap. He felt a flash of gratitude to the almost certainly oblivious gunnery chief as she continued in a dry, faux-conversational tone without missing a beat. "What do you think those things sticking out of the walls are?"

"They are stasis pods," Liara said, her voice both reverent and sad, and she instantly had Shepard's attention. "Sealed and inactive stasis pods."

"You mean..." Ashley started in a surprised tone before trailing off, as if she could deny the implication by not voicing it.

"Yes. Each pod most likely contains a dead Prothean," Liara confirmed resolutely. "I can only assume they tried to survive the Reaper's genocide of their species through cryogenic freezing, and then never woke up."

"Jesus," Ashley breathed. "This isn't a base, it's a tomb."

"And it'll be Saren's, if I have anything to say about it," Wrex rumbled into the somber silence that followed. Rex barked in agreement from where he sat across from the krogan, utter confidence in its tone.

"Damn straight," Garrus agreed easily. "We'll- whoa!"

Whatever the turian was going to say was lost as a nearly solid wall of bright gold light suddenly took up the entire hallway mere meters from Mako's nose. Shepard slammed on the brakes, grimacing as his momentum pressed his torso against his restraints hard enough to momentarily cut off circulation, and brought the TIV to a shuddering halt less than foot from contact with the barrier. Choked cries of surprise echoed through the cramped interior of the transport as the others suffered the same he did, but Shepard ignored it in favor of the exterior.

Instinct took over automatically, the hours of endless drills and maneuvers in combat driving coming immediately to the forefront of his mind. Without stopping to think, he immediately threw the vehicle into reverse and gunned the throttle, only for Mako to come to yet another shuddering halt as he realized an identical barrier had sprouted only a handful of meters behind them.

"Brace for impact!" Shepard barked as he realized they were well and truly trapped, and that the geth would never let this kind of opportunity pass them by.

A wave of apprehension crackled through the TIV like lightning, and Shepard's heart beat loud in his ears as the cameras he controlled swivelled all around in a desperate bid to find the source of the ambush before they could attack. Fear thrummed in the air for several tense seconds, but when nothing happened, confusion slowly began to replace it.

"The hell?" Shepard muttered as he finished a scan of the entire section in the shield and could find no hint of the geth. Hell, the only things that marked this stretch of hall any different from the last several kilometers were the glowing barriers and the firmly closed man-sized door set in one of the walls.

"Saren must be trying to stop us," Ashley growled.

"Whatever it is, we don't have time to wait and figure it out," Garrus said firmly. A faint whir sounded as he aimed Mako's gun. "We'll just have to go through it."

Without further ado, the twin-linked heavy plasmas atop Mako roared to life and filled the air with a nearly constant stream of superhot plasma. The barrier didn't even seem to notice. If anything, it grew even more solid looking with every bolt that hit it.

Garrus growled quietly and stopped firing as he noticed it himself. "What is this thing?"

"I dunno, but that isn't going to work," Shepard answered with a scowl. They'd have to go with Plan B. Activating his comm, he called the _Normandy_. "EDI, we've hit a wall. We need a portal to the other side."

"Yes, Commander," she answered immediately, and a portal began forcing its way open a few feet from the TIV's hull. "Will there be anything else?"

Shepard opened his mouth to answer, but shut it with a click when a new voice, a soothing, obviously synthesized sound of indeterminate gender filled the small space between the glowing walls and the door he'd noticed earlier slid smoothly open. "Please wait. I must speak with you."

"Cuz that's not a trap at all," Shepard drawled sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, pulling a low murmur of agreement from most of the squad. Without even bothering to respond, he dismissed the voice out of hand and began to guide Mako toward the portal.

"Wait!" the voice came again, insistent, almost desperate, the very instant the vehicle started to move. "Please! I have vital information about the Reapers!"

That got his attention, most firmly. The TIV froze, mere feet from the portal, and he opened a connection to the exterior speakers. "I'm listening."

"I cannot broadcast this information. The Reapers' servants cannot learn of it, or all is lost. Please. The elevator in the wall beside you will bring you to me."

"And why should I trust you?" Shepard asked with a scowl. His inner pragmatist was demanding he ignore whatever trap or lunatic this actually was, but the rest of him was loathe to let this pass by. It was the first time they'd run into anything that had so much as hinted at knowing something about the Reapers, and if it was good intel, any amount of delay would be worthwhile. "Hell, how do I know you're information is any good?"

"Because I am the final legacy of my creators," the voice explained in a melancholic tone. "And I witnessed their annihilation."

The commander's brow furrowed. "Who or what are you?"

"My name is Vigil, an advanced non-organic analysis system with personality imprints from Ksad Ishan, Chief Overseer of Facility 11290. Please, I do not have much time left. It is imperative for your own survival that we speak at once."

"Shepard!" Liara cut in excitedly. "That's the name I got from the VI in the archive! This is a real Prothean AI!"

"If it's a Prothean AI, how the hell is it speaking a language I can understand?" Shepard asked, and the asari deflated slightly, only to perk up as Vigil responded. The commander cursed inwardly at the realization that he'd left his mic on.

"The arrival of unknown species to investigate this world was not unforeseen. This was, in fact, the most likely outcome of our actions," it explained. "My creators ensured I would be able to create an adequate translation suite given time and language samples, which I acquired through your unsecured radio and verbal communications."

"Please, if we do not act soon, the Reapers will once more consume the galaxy. We must speak now."

There was only one response he could really give to that. He just hoped it was the right one.

Mako gently lowered itself into the low water and its hatch cracked open with a hiss. "Everybody out," Shepard said, forcing his voice to hide the uncertainty and doubt that roiled nauseatingly in his gut. "Let's go see what it has to say."

* * *

Shepard emerged from the surprisingly solid elevator and let out a sigh of relief. Not only had the elevator not been booby-trapped to fall or explode, but there wasn't a corporeal being, geth or otherwise, outside of his squad in sight. It was somewhat refreshing for his paranoia to be proven wrong. After one look around though, he had to wonder. Why the hell there was an elevator to this place? Hell, why did it exist at all? From a quick glance around the tall, narrow room, there really wasn't much reason for the forty plus meter tall room to exist at all.

The entire place was seemingly devoted to empty space, save where the giant blue-veined roots had burst out of the walls, and the single twenty or so meter long suspended walkway he stood on. A terminal waited silently at the end of the walkway, while a vague holographic storm of orange-white static hovering before it. He arched an eyebrow at it. Was this AI really worth building such an enormous room around?

Liara didn't seem to find anything wrong with it though, and she knew the Protheans far better than he ever would. Maybe this kind of thing was normal for them? God knows humans had some customs that must seem bizarre to aliens.

With a mental slap, Shepard shook off the distracting turn his thoughts had taken once he and the squad had come within comfortable speaking distance of the terminal. "Vigil, I presume?" he asked unnecessarily. When the hologram flashed in acknowledgment, he continued. "What do you know about the Reapers?"

"Far too much," Vigil answered morosely. The hologram flashed again, and Shepard got the distinct impression it would be scowling heavily if it was able to hold a shape. "And I will tell you all of it. The Reaper Cycle has existed for millions, perhaps even billions, of years. Unchanged and unchallenged by all those who came before. To stop it, you must understand, lest you make the same mistakes we did."

"The Citadel is the heart of galactic civilization," it said confidently. "And the seat of government."

"For some, maybe," Ashley interjected with an impish grin. "The rest of us don't have anything to do with it."

Vigil paused, taken aback by the clearly unexpected response. "What do you mean?"

"Short version is that there's more than one significant power bloc in the galaxy these days," Shepard said, distilling the current state of galactic politics into the fewest words he could possibly manage. "Three, maybe four, to be specific. Only one of them has anything to do with the Citadel."

"I see," Vigil said pensively. "Perhaps there is still some hope then. However, not even that will be enough to fully avoid the dangers posed by the Citadel."

"Dangers of the Citadel?" Garrus repeated, the frown clear in his voice. Shepard groaned internally, hoping against hope that the AI wasn't about to say what he thought it was. "What does that mean?"

"The Citadel is a trap," the AI answered calmly. "The station is, in truth, an enormous mass relay. One that links to darkspace, the empty void beyond the galaxy's edge. When the Citadel Relay is activated, the Reapers will pour through. Everything you know and love will be destroyed."

Damnit. There went any hope that Legion had been misinformed. Even expecting it didn't make it suck any less. He swallowed heavily. This mission really was one that decided the fate of the entire galaxy.

At the same time, Garrus made a frustrated, aggrieved noise deep in his throat before turning to Legion. "Looks like you were right," he said, equally resigned to and afraid of his own words.

"Yes," Legion confirmed. "The likelihood Nazara attempted to deceive the geth was quite low."

Garrus started to reply, but Wrex cut in abruptly. "Yea, yea, you two can kiss and make up later. I want to know how the Reapers managed to hide the most powerful mass relay in the galaxy in the Citadel without anyone noticing."

"The Reapers are masters of misinformation and redirection," Vigil answered with calm surety. "They have gone to great lengths to ensure the greatest secrets of the Citadel remain hidden until it is far too late."

"How?" Garrus demanded, somewhere between heated and determined. "How would they hide something that obvious?"

"Tell me, who performs the maintenance of the Citadel? Who repairs damage and integrates new components? Who is seemingly everywhere and is yet as poorly understood as the Citadel itself?"

"The keepers..." Tali murmured in shocked realization and the whole squad whirled as one to face her. Garrus made a strange, choking sound, but did, or could, not form words.

"Correct. The keepers enable any species that discovers the Citadel to use it without fully understanding its technology. The very existence of the keepers ensures that no one will ever discover the Citadel's true nature before firmly entrenching themselves within it."

"But then..." Garrus began in a sick voice before trailing off.

"The Reapers can decapitate the Council in the opening gambit," Wrex picked up where the turian left off. He shook his head with a small, wry smile on his lips. "I have to admit, it's one hell of a trap."

Shepard nodded distractedly, even as his mind raced, trying to process this information. "That's all they could do though," he commented with a frown aimed at Vigil. "You said that the Citadel trap would be dangerous to the other galactic powers as well. How?"

The hologram pulsed rapidly for a second or two before answering. "The Citadel is the heart of the relay network. Whoever controls the Citadel controls the mass relays. When the Reapers came for us, they locked down every relay. Transportation was crippled. Each star system was isolated, cut off from the others. No single system could hope to stand against the Reaper tide when it washed over them."

Shepard blinked. Okay, that could be bad. Everything outside of Coalition space relied on the relay network, and no one in the Terminus or even Citadel space would survive if their strategic movements were so drastically hampered. It wouldn't even be a challenge. The Reapers could tear them apart almost at leisure.

Not to mention that if the Citadel could activate relays, the Reapers would have a backdoor to almost a third of the systems inside Coalition space. Doors that they had no idea how to close. They might be able to move the Relays through portals, but each one would take a dedicated supercarrier in order to generate big enough portals, if they ever could, and they'd have to move it far enough to actually make it a problem for the Reapers to get back to its original system. Shepard, at least, couldn't see how they could pull that off in anything like a realistic timeframe.

"What happened afterward? What did the Old Machines do upon achieving victory?" Legion interrupted dispassionately. The emotionless, mechanical voice snapped Shepard from his brief reverie and pulled his attention once more to Vigil.

"They obliterated our people. World by world, system by system, individual by individual."

"Did any of your people attempt to surrender?"

"Yes. No surrender was ever accepted. No mercy was ever granted. Our enemy had a single goal: the eradication of all advanced organic life," Vigil said with the faintest quaver in its voice. "Through the Citadel, the Reapers had access to all our records; maps, census data, everything. Their fleets rampaged through every settled region in the galaxy. Some worlds were purged, utterly destroyed. Others were conquered, their populations enslaved. Then these indoctrinated servants were taken in as refugees by other Prothean survivors, unaware of the sleeper agent they had invited into their midst."

"Within only a few centuries, the Reapers had killed or enslaved every member of the Prothean Empire, Prothean or otherwise. They were relentless, thorough, and unspeakably brutal. Then they stripped our worlds bare. Everything of value, all resources, all technology, were fed to the Reaper armada."

"And then they retreated back through the Citadel Relay, certain that all advanced organic life and all evidence of their existence had been extinguished. Only their indoctrinated slaves were left behind, to starve or die of exposure. The genocide of the Protheans was complete."

Legion nodded a wordless acknowledgment, and Shepard scowled. Every new thing he learned about the damned Reapers made them sound worse, and they had started on par with the Ethereals. Still, he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Why do they do this? What possible benefit does this, this cycle of genocide give them?"

"The Reapers are alien, unknowable. Perhaps they need organic slaves or resources, or perhaps they simply find it entertaining. It is impossible to know for certain. Most likely, they are driven by motives we cannot hope to comprehend. In the end, it does not matter. Your survival depends on stopping them, not understanding them."

"Good point," Shepard conceded with a nod. The Ethereal War was proof enough of those words. Some part of him still hoped to eventually be able to figure it out though. After all, it's usually a lot easier to solve a problem when you know _why_ it's a problem in the first place. Ah well, he could worry about it later. He still had a job to do now.

"So the Citadel is a trap, we can't surrender, and we can't trust survivors of a Reaper attack," he summarized the pertinent information conveyed thus far. "What else do you have on the Reapers?"

"Knowledge of the last act of the Protheans, the only reason any hope remains, and the key to stopping the Reaper invasion."

"What do you mean? Is it the Conduit?"

"No," Vigil answered calmly, ignoring the rustle of surprise that spread through the squad. "The Conduit is merely a means to an end."

"Explain," Shepard said with a scowl.

"Ilos was a top-secret world, dedicated to developing the most advanced technologies in the Prothean Empire." Liara nearly squealed at that news, but when everyone turned to stare, quickly managed to recompose herself with an embarrassed cough. "This particular facility was dedicated to Project Conduit. Its purpose was to construct a mass relay of our own, one that linked directly to the Citadel."

"The Conduit is a back door into the Citadel!" the commander exclaimed in shock. A beat later, his eyes went wide and his blood went cold. "And it's been activated! That was what those blue flashes were! Saren's already on the Citadel!"

"Yes," Vigil agreed sadly, sending ripple of uneasy urgency spreading through the entire squad. "The Conduit has been activated and then used precisely seven times in the last thirty minutes."

"Where is it?!" Shepard demanded, his voice starting to take on the shrill of panic. He'd been sure that the Geth would need to at least move the Conduit to the Citadel before any of this became a problem. The idea that it would let them completely bypass the Citadel's defenses had never entered his mind. "We need to get there now!"

"There is one more piece to discuss," Vigil countered. "Then I will tell you."

Shepard twitched and a small purple corona burst out of his tightly clenched fist as he fought against the sudden surge of frustrated rage that swelled in his chest to join the fear. "We don't have time for any more! Saren's already there! The Reapers could be pouring in as we speak!"

Fuck this thing, he thought furiously. It clearly wasn't interested in hurrying. So without waiting for a response, he immediately tried to contact Admiral Hackett. "Sir!" he began the second the connection solidified, plowing straight over the admiral's greeting. "Recall the troops and get to the Citadel, now!"

"What's going on, Commander?" Hackett's calm, gravelly voice easily broke through the waves of panic edging into his thoughts and he took a deep, steadying breath.

"The Conduit isn't a weapon or a key or anything like that, sir," he said, determination slowly beginning to overcome the initial panic. "It's a _mass relay_, straight into the Citadel, and the geth have already used it. They're probably already trying to activate the Citadel Relay, and if they manage to turn it on, the Citadel Council will have a front-row seat to the apocalypse."

"What?!" Hackett demanded, barely hanging on to his earlier calm. "Are you sure about this?"

"I'm staring at the Prothean AI that just laid it all out to me, sir," he answered, as confidently as he could. "If it's a lie, it's the best one I've ever seen."

"Damn," the admiral all but growled. "Alright, we're going. You need to get back to the _Normandy_."

"Sir, my team and I can do more good if we follow in Saren's footsteps," Shepard countered, his frantic panic finally fully suppressed by a grim determination. "We'll hit them from behind while you come in from the front. Worst case, we'll take out the Conduit and make sure they can't get any reinforcements that way."

"Do it," Hackett agreed instantly. "We'll take the _Normandy_ with us and meet you there."

"Yes sir," Shepard said, and the connection closed. He took a deep, steadying breath, feeling significantly less pressured now that he knew something was being done about this, and turned back to Vigil. "Now, tell me where the Conduit is."

"You will accomplish nothing without the tools I am trying to give you," Vigil said. "Stay awhile and listen, or your haste will doom the galaxy."

The utter certainty dripping from its voice, more than anything else, convinced Shepard to comply, but he wasn't happy about it. He shot the hologram a ferocious glare from behind his helmet, but kept his voice even when he responded. "Then speak quickly."

"When the Reapers attacked, Ilos was spared," Vigil began. It looked as if it was going to expand on how, but when Shepard's glare intensified, it stopped itself with an almost sheepish cough. Shepard had to admit that part of him was curious about that, but not enough to risk the entire galaxy for it. It probably had something to do with the planet being top-secret, and that assumption was good enough for now. "The personnel retreated into these archives and were put into cryogenic stasis. The extermination of a galactic species is a long process however, and several centuries passed before the Reapers left. When they did, I had only enough power to ensure the top researchers survived."

"Get to the point," Shepard growled impatiently, the sentiment echoed by the others around him.

"When the researchers awoke, they determined that the Prothean species was almost certainly doomed. They could not sustain a viable population, and the only other sign of survivors was a galaxy wide broadcast through the remaining beacons, calling for all Prothean survivors to gather in a remote system. It was almost certainly a Reaper trap for any survivors they may have missed. Armed with this realization, the researchers turned their efforts to stopping the Reaper threat, forever."

"It was determined that the keepers were the key."

"The keepers?" Garrus asked, quickly and irritably, his tone almost dismissive. "Didn't you just get done explaining how they're under Reaper control?"

"The keepers are controlled by the Citadel," Vigil explained, his voice calm in the face of the turian's continued ire. "Before each invasion, a signal is sent throughout the Citadel that compels the keepers to activate its relay."

"After decades of study, the researchers discovered a way to alter this signal. They used the Conduit to access the Citadel and made the necessary modifications. In this cycle, when the vanguard attempted to signal the Citadel, the keepers ignored it, trapping the Reapers in darkspace."

Almost despite himself, Shepard felt himself relax marginally at that. If the Citadel Relay was shut down, they may not have to worry about the Reapers at all. Then he frowned as something else occurred to him. "There's a manual control for the Citadel Relay, isn't there?"

"Yes," Vigil confirmed, and Shepard's heart sank back into the sea of borderline panic. "I assume that the vanguard's thralls will use the Conduit to bypass the Citadel's defenses and thereby give the vanguard access to those controls."

"Fuck," Shepard and Ashley said in unison. "What can we do to stop it?"

"I have a program in my possession that was created by the researchers," Vigil instantly. "If executed on the Citadel's Master Control Unit, it will corrupt the station's security protocols and grant you temporary control of the entire station. It should give you an edge against the vanguard's forces."

"Wait," Tali cut in. "Where's the Master Control Unit? I've never heard of such a thing."

"It is in the upper-most room in the central spire of the Citadel. I am afraid I do not know what you call it. In our cycle, it was the Emperor's throne room."

"The Council Chambers," Garrus said firmly. "It's gotta be."

"Agreed," Shepard said before turning back to Vigil. A few quick motions opened a connection with his omnitool for the AI and he nodded sharply once its program was transferred over. "Now where's the Conduit?"

Vigil rattled off a series of coordinates. Liara paused for a moment, clearly studying the map, then nodded sharply. "That is less than two kilometers further down the tunnel, Shepard!"

He nodded. "We're wasting time here people. Saren's got enough of a head start. Let's go!"

* * *

"We must be getting close," Shepard commented breathlessly, briefly sparing his attention from the controls he had been working furiously.

"You think?" Garrus asked dryly, not looking away from the viewscreens for the turret. His talons tightened on the controls and the humming roar of Mako's only real armament filled the air. The last of the latest, and largest yet, group of rocket-launcher-armed geth troopers vanished under a barrage of brilliant green, and he relaxed marginally in his seat. "What was your first clue?"

"Call it a hunch," Shepard returned, equally dryly, as Mako resumed its course through the offshoot tunnel Vigil had directed them towards. Ruined geth corpses fluttered silently in the wake of their passage, sending small ripples through the murky, white-stained water on the tunnel floor, before disappearing as the TIV rounded another corner. The vehicle jerked abruptly as it was forced to once more dance out of the paths of too many rockets to easily count.

"This is getting ridiculous!" the commander said angrily as a pair of rockets he hadn't been fast enough to avoid slammed into Mako's shield, collapsing it nearly instantly and sending the vehicle careening off course. The commander ignored the damage reports, nothing in it was terribly urgent, and the way the turret fell silent as Garrus, along with everyone else, was jostled randomly in favor of working furiously to regain control of their motion, but he was forced to hasten their tumble instead by the second barrage of rockets. The harness alternatively felt too loose and too tight as they bounced along the tunnel, dangerously close to one of the walls. In the chaos of that moment, he could only be thankful that the antigrav was still working, or they'd have much bigger problems.

The second volley came screaming in all around Mako then, and they just barely managed to avoid it all, even if they couldn't avoid all of the shrapnel. In the resulting lull as the geth scrambled to reload, he finally managed to reclaim steady control of the vehicle, pulling it up short and slaloming back toward them. Garrus immediately resumed his task the very instant the TIV stopped spinning. Through his own viewscreens, Shepard watched as plasma spewed in a nearly endless stream from the turret atop the vehicle and swept through the geth formation like a scythe.

But not even Garrus could catch all of their foes before they were ready to fire once more. The trio of geth lucky or skilled enough to live that long managed to reload their weapons and fire as one, sending yet another barrage of explosive force straight at them.

Shepard immediately flared the antigrav and sent the vehicle catapulting high into the air and over the attack, missing the first of the missiles by mere feet. His lips quirked into a small smirk as the vehicle's momentum carried them all the way overhead of the geth and he remembered something a friend liked to do. "Nihlus, this one's for you," he muttered under his breath, and reversed the antigrav, sending the TIV speeding straight down.

Startled exclamations rang through the cramped interior, alongside accusations of insanity, stupidity, or both, but he ignored it. He had to time this just right.

The TIV crashed into the geth beneath it before they could even begin to physically react and a loud crunching noise filled the air, pulling a satisfied, slightly feral smile across Shepard's face, and he reversed the antigrav yet again. The TIV's descent immediately slowed, but with only two meters to spare, there was never any hope of it stopping. Not without killing the passengers from the g-load at least.

But then again, he didn't want it to stop.

Mako hit the ground like a battering ram, sending a tingling shockwave through Shepard's legs and pulling even more complaints from the others, but upon checking the TIV's status readout, even that couldn't stop him from feeling incredibly smug. They'd landed hard, but nothing more than the outermost layer of belly armor had been damaged.

A few deft motions with the controls had the antigrav heft Mako back into the air and moved it back a bit, finally allowing him to see the three crushed geth, each broken corpse in a swiftly-growing puddle of pearly white, that was the result of his handiwork. That smug feeling grew even stronger.

"Well," Garrus said, his voice tense behind the layer of faux-calm he projected. "That's one way to handle geth, I suppose."

"I wasn't going to let you have _all_ the fun," Shepard returned easily, spectacularly upbeat after such an admittedly insane ploy actually worked exactly like he thought it would. He glanced back at the passengers. "You guys alright back there?"

A long second of silence filled the vehicle in response before Tali chose to speak up. Her voice carried the slightest quiver as she said, "Anyone else beginning to think we should revoke his driving privileges?"

"Oh come on," Shepard groaned with a roll of his eyes at the murmur of agreement that spread through the squad. Even from Rex, the traitor. "It wasn't that bad."

"No," Liara agreed matter-of-factly. "It was worse."

"I get no respect," he groused before turning back to his controls and sending Mako back down the corridor, absently noting that its barrier had almost fully recharged by then. The transport rounded the next corner and all hint of the playful banter they'd been in vanished instantly at the sight that awaited them.

The tunnel continued from their position a dozen meters or so before suddenly exploding outward into an enormous, tiered cavern _Sovereign_ could park in. The road they were on emptied out onto the lowest tier and went straight into the first tier, where it formed a ramp that perfectly bisected each tier all the way to the top. On the fourth and highest tier, atop a large, flat platform, stood what could only be the Conduit. A swirling, not to mention brightly glowing, core of element zero sat embedded in the center of the platform while two tines, looking more like the rails of a magnetic accelerator than anything else, sprouted from opposing sides of the plate at low angles and curved halfway around the core before turning toward the open sky

Then he noticed the geth, and his heart sank. Each one of the four tiers bore two colossi and an easy score of miscellaneous infantry of every description. There was no way they'd be able to fight all of them at once, not without major air support at least. The kind of support that he'd already sent high-tailing for the Citadel.

Then an even more unpleasant thought occurred to him. If this was the rearguard, just how big was the force already on the Citadel?

At nearly the exact same moment, the comm came to life. A voice, distant, tinny, and laced with static, but still recognizably Vigil's filled the TIV. "The Conduit will deactivate in fory-two seconds. If it is allowed to, it cannot be reactivated for days."

Shepard's eyes went wide at that. Damnit, now they really didn't have any time. The Conduit was the only way he was getting to the Citadel in time to stop Saren. There was no other way around it. If they got locked out, all hope was lost. In that brief instant, his resolve, wavering at the thought of facing so very _many_ geth, firmed once more. If the Conduit was going to deactivate, there was really only one thing they could do. Use it before time ran out.

"Hang on tight!" Shepard barked at the others, and threw Mako's throttle as high as it would go. The transport took off with a roar and burst from the tunnel like a bat out of hell. "Legion, prep the command signal for us, send it the instant we're in range!"

The geth replied, but it was only background noise to the pulsing thud of his own heartbeat. The very instant Mako emerged, every single geth in the room zeroed in on it and filled the air with a nearly solid wall of bullets, missiles, and practically everything else that could be conceptualized as a projectile. A loud rushing sound, the movement of his own blood, filled Shepard's ears, blocking out all other sound, and time seemed to slow as raw adrenaline poured through his veins like fire. His thoughts congealed into a strange sort of detached tranquility that made it nearly impossible to focus, but made everything seem so strikingly clear.

It was obvious with a single glance that he'd never be able to dodge what was coming. There was no room, and no time even if there was. His only choice was to move as little as necessary to avoid the worst of it and hope it would be enough.

His grip tightened on his control yoke and he twitched it back and forth, sending the transport slaloming down the track as it raced for the Conduit. Bullets pinged off Mako's shield in a nearly constant rain, chipping away at its strength alarmingly quickly, even as colossi beams and missiles were narrowly avoided.

It took all of two seconds for Mako to cross the distance to the beginning of the ramp. Coincidentally, that was also the time it took its shields to fail, torn down by a missile Shepard had had no hope of avoiding.

Enemy fire redoubled at the sight, and Shepard's viewscreens began to erupt with damage reports of every description. He grimaced at the readouts, mentally apologizing to the TIV's VI, and sent it dropping as low as it could go. In the same instant, a colossus' beam crackled past overhead, missing the body of the TIV by less than inch, but tearing through its turret with ease.

The gun exploded violently, throwing the transport into the ground where it, thankfully, bounced back into the air with only the slightest loss of momentum. Shepard jerked against his restraints, but ignored it entirely, all of his attention consumed by dodging the next colossus' follow up attack that plowed into the ramp less than a foot to Mako's left.

The transport was thrown into a tumbling roll that he just barely managed to keep on course. Damage reports scrolled across his viewscreen faster than he could keep track and the tell tale crack of vahlenite giving up the ghost filled the air, but he pushed it aside. His mind was consumed by a single thought: To slow was to die. And he refused to die here.

His hands danced over his controls, stopping the roll just in time to throw Mako into the air, barely managing to make it over the volley of missiles that streaked by beneath it, only to come down hard. The transport once again bounced off the ramp at the lip of the third tier, accompanied by the squeal and crunch of metal-on-metal impact.

Shepard's viewscreen was abruptly outlined in red as an entire outer armor plate sloughed off with a painfully loud crack, causing the whole transport to wobble violently, its balance ruined. The others made various noises of surprise and shock and Shepard cursed under his breath, but the transport was still moving, and that was all that mattered.

Mako barreled forward, carried more by sheer momentum than anything else at this point, and blew past the lip of the fourth tier, where it flew off the end of the ramp and arced gracelessly through the air. It slammed heavily into the ground once more, and it was only by luck that its catastrophically damaged antigrav managed to get it back into the air at all.

At the same time, a volley of missiles rained down behind it. The TIV's hatch shattered with a deafening crack and a wave of shrapnel tore down the aisle of the transport before slamming into Shepard's back and head, slamming him against his restraints hard enough to break them. He flew forward and went head-first into the controls. His helmet cracked against the viewscreen and voices rang out from all around him, but he couldn't make heads or tails of them through the fog that had suddenly enveloped his thoughts. He blinked, trying to make sense of the blurry shapes that filled his vision, and he could just barely recognize the shape of the Conduit. It loomed large in the screen his helmet was pressed against, the glow in its heart getting brighter and brighter even as he stared blankly at it.

There was a sudden, indescribable sensation of motion, and everything went black.

* * *

**RESEARCH REPORT  
****Codename: Colossus  
****June 2183  
**_Much like the geth armature, previously the only example of geth armored vehicles, this platform is a four legged walker that resembles a dinosaur and serves the role of mobile heavy weapons platform. That is where the similarities end, however. This unit is both larger and far more heavily armed than the armature, seeming to fill a dedicated anti-vehicle or anti-starship role. Its primary weapon is a ferrofluid accelerator much like the hand-held Dragonlance weapon utilized by primes but on a significantly larger scale. Its destructive potential is an order of magnitude larger, easily the equal of a fighter craft's plasma cannon and, with minor modifications, likely on par with even a fusion lance. In addition, this platform has no less than fourteen missile pods embedded in its back. Each pod carries a minifacturing fabricator, akin to those found in omni-tools, which is capable of creating the pod's armaments in a matter of seconds from a surprisingly small sample of omni-gel. With any sort of regular resupply, this platform carries a functionally infinite supply of missiles while in the field._**  
**

_The platform's defensive capabilities have also been greatly enhanced. Its armor is proportionally thicker than the armature's, by almost forty percent in places, and has been pushed to its physical limits in terms of thermal dispersion and redirection. This platform is not immune to plasma or laser weaponry, but it is closer than any other enemy we have yet encountered, save the ogres. That is not its only protection however. The platform's kinetic barriers are also of a radically different design from any we have ever seen before. Traditional barrier design uses the mass effect to create static 'walls', for lack of a better term, that provide a direct, opposing force to any object that comes into contact with them, halting its momentum entirely. This platform instead rotates the field emitters as they fire, which in turn rapidly oscillates the barrier 'wall'. In doing so, it provides an angled force upon contact that swats aside incoming projectiles, which redirects momentum as opposed to stopping it. This allows the shield to protect against incoming attacks at drastically lower energy cost, greatly prolonging its endurance in active combat. In time, we believe we can replicate this effect with our own kinetic barrier emitters, but for now, many of the intricacies are beyond our expertise. We may need to request aid from our geth or quarian allies to finalize the design._


End file.
